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WOODCRAFT 

BY 

"NESSMUK" 



THIRTEENTH EDITION 



NEW YORK: 

FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO. 

1918 



^ 






Copyright 
Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
1918 



V "' 



1)9$ 



OCT 30 fg/o 



©CI.A506407 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 1 

Overwork and Recreation. — Outing and Out- 
ers.— How to Do It, and Why They Miss 
it. 

CHAPTER II. - - - - 8 

Knapsack, Hatchet, Knives, Tinware, Rods, 
Fishing Tackle, Ditty-Bag. 

CHAPTER III. 18 

Getting Lost. — Camping Out.— Roughing It 
or Smoothing It. — Insects. — Camps, And 
How to Make Them. 

CHAPTER IV. 40 

Camp-Fires and Their Importance. — The 
Wasteful, Wrong Way They are Usually 
Made, and the Right Way to Make Them. 

CHAPTER V. 50 

Fishing, With and Without Flies.— Some 
Tackle and Lures. — Discursive Remarks 
on the Gentle Art.— The Headlight. — 
Frogging. 

CHAPTER VI. 71 

Camp Cooking.— How it is Usually Done, 
With a Few Simple Hints on Plain Cook- 
ing. — Cooking Fire and Out-Door Range. 

CHAPTER VII. 91 

More Hints on Cooking, with some Simple 
Receipts. — Bread, Coffee, Soups, Stews, 
Beans, Potatoes, Fish, Vegetables, Veni- 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII. 113 

A Ten Days' Trip in the Wilderness. — Go- 
ing it Alone. 

CHAPTER IX. - - - - - 128 

The Light Canoe and Double-Blade. — Vari- 
ous Canoes for Various Canoeists. — Rea- 
sons for Preferring the Clinker-Built 
Cedar. 

CHAPTER X. 139 

Odds and Ends. — Where to go for an Out- 
ing. — Why a Clinker? — Boughs and 
Browse. — Suggestions. — Good Night. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Knapsack and Ditty-Bag ----- 9 

Hatchet and Knives - - - - - - 11 

Indian Camp -- 27 

Shanty-Tent and Camp-Fire 35 

Shanty-Tent Spread Out *■ - - - 37 

Camp-Fire as it Should be Made 47 

Frog Bait 59 

Three-Hook Gangs ------ 59 

G. W. Hatchet - 83 

Out-Door Cooking Range 85 



PREFACE 



"TT700DCRAFT" is dedicated to the Grand Army 
of "Outers," as a pocket volume of reference 
on — woodcraft. 

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime, 
With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats; 

And men are withered before their prime 
By the curse paved in with the lanes and streets. 

And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed, 
In the smothering reek of mill and mine; 

And death stalks in on the struggling crowd — 
But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine. 

NESSMUK. 



WOODCRAFT 



CHAPTER I. 

OVERWORK AND RECREATION.- — OtTTING AND OUTERS. 
TO DO IT, AND WHY THEY MISS IT. 



HOW 



T DOES not need that Herbert Spencer 
should cross the ocean to tell us that 
we are an over-worked nation; that 
our hair turns gray ten years earlier 
than the Englishman's; or, "that we 
have had somewhat too much of the 
gospel of work," and, "it is time to 
preach the gospel of relaxation." 
It is all true. But we work harder, 
accomplish more in a given time, and 
last quite as long as slower races. As to the gray 
hair — perhaps gray hair is better than none; and 
it is a fact that the average Briton becomes bald 
as early as the American turns gray. There is, 
however, a sad significance in his words when he says: 
"In every circle I have met men who had themselves 
suffered from nervous collapse due to stress of busi- 
ness, or named friends who had either killed them- 




WOODCRAFT 



selves by overwork, or had been permanently incapa- 
citated, or had wasted long periods in endeavors to 
recover health." Too true. And it is the constant 
strain, without let-up or relaxation, that, in nine 
cases out of ten, snaps the cord and ends in what 
the doctors call " nervous prostration " — something 
akin to paralysis — from which the sufferer seldom 
wholly recovers. 

Mr. Spencer quotes that quaint old chronicler, 
Froissart, as saying, " The English take their pleas- 
ures sadly, after their fashion; " and thinks if he 
lived now, he would say of Americans, "they take 
their pleasures hurriedly, after their fashion." 
Perhaps. 

It is an age of hurry and worry. Anything slower 
than steam is apt to "get left." Fortunes are quickly 
made and freely spent. Nearly all busy, hard-worked 
Americans have an intuitive sense of the need that 
exists for at least one period of rest and relaxation 
during each year, and all — or nearly all — are willing 
to pay liberally, too liberally in fact, for anything 
that conduces to rest, recreation and sport. I am 
sorry to say that we mostly get swindled. As an 
average, the summer outer who goes to forest, lake 
or stream for health and sport, gets about ten cents' 
worth for a dollar of outlay. A majority will admit — 
to themselves at least — that after a month's vaca- 
tion, they return to work with an inward conscious- 
ness of being somewhat disappointed — and beaten. 
We are free with our money when we have it. We 
are known throughout the civilized world for our 
lavishness in paying for our pleasures; but it humili- 
ates us to know we have been beaten, and this is 



OUTERS 3 



what the most of us do know at the end of a summer 
vacation. To the man of millions it makes little dif- 
ference. He is able to pay liberally for boats, buck- 
boards and "body service," if he chooses to spend a 
summer in the North Woods. He has no need to 
study the questions of lightness and economy in a 
forest and stream outing. Let his guides take care 
of him; and unto them and the landlords he will give 
freely of his substance. 

I do not write for him, and can do him little good. 
But there are hundreds of thousands of practical, 
useful men, many of them far from being rich; 
mechanics, artists, writers, merchants, clerks, busi- 
ness men — workers, so to speak — who sorely need 
and well deserve a season of rest and relaxation 
at least once a year. To these, and for these, I 
write. 

Perhaps more than fifty years of devotion to 
"woodcraft" may enable me to give a few useful 
hints and suggestions to those whose dreams, during 
the close season of work, are of camp-life by flood, 
field and forest. 

I have found that nearly all who have a real love 
of nature and out-of-door camp-life, spend a good 
deal of time and talk in planning future trips, or 
discussing the trips and pleasures gone by, but still 
dear to memory. 

When the mountain streams are frozen and the Nor'land 
winds are out; 

when the winter winds are drifting the bitter sleet 
and snow; when winter rains are making out-of-door 
life unendurable; when season, weather and law, 



4 WOODCRAFT 



combine to make it "close time" for beast, bird and 
man, it is well that a few congenial spirits should, at 
some favorite trysting place, gather around the glow- 
ing stove and exchange yarns, opinions and experi- 
ences. Perhaps no two will exactly agree on the best 
ground for an outing, on the flies, rods, reels, guns, 
etc., or half a dozen other points that may be dis- 
cussed. But one thing all admit. Each and every 
one has gone to his chosen ground with too much 
impedimenta, too much duffle; and nearly all have 
used boats at least twice as heavy as they need to 
have been. The temptation to buy this or that bit 
of indispensable camp-kit has been too strong, and 
we have gone to the blessed woods, handicapped 
with a load fit for a pack-mule. This is not how to 
do it. ! 

Go light; the lighter the better, so that you have 
the simplest material for health, comfort and enjoy- 
ment. 

Of course, if you intend to have a permanent camp, 
and can reach it by boat or wagon, lightness is not 
so important, though even in that case it is well to 
guard against taking in a lot of stuff that is likely 
to prove of more weight than worth — only to leave 
it behind when you come out. 

As to clothing for the woods, a good deal of 
nonsense has been written about " strong, coarse 
woolen clothes." You do not want coarse woolen 
clothes. Fine woolen cassimere of medium thick- 
ness for coat, vest and pantaloons, with no cotton 
lining. Color, slate gray or dead-leaf (either is 
good). Two soft, thick woolen shirts; two pairs of 
fine, but substantial, woolen drawers; two pairs of 



FOOTGEAR 



strong woolen socks or stockings; these are what 
you need, and all you need in the way of clothing 
for the woods, excepting hat and boots, or gaiters. 
Boots are best — providing you do not let yourself 
be inveigled into wearing a pair of long-legged heavy 
boots with thick soles, as has been often advised by 
writers who knew no better. Heavy, long-legged 
boots are a weary, tiresome incumbrance on a hard 
tramp through rough woods. Even moccasins are 
better. Gaiters, all sorts of high shoes in fact, are 
too bothersome about fastening and unfastening. 
Light boots are best. Not thin, unserviceable affairs, 
but light as to actual weight. The following hints 
will give an idea for the best footgear for the woods; 
Let them be single soled, single backs and single 
fronts, except light, short foot-linings. Backs of 
solid "country kip;" fronts of substantial French 
calf; heel one inch high, with steel nails; countered 
outside; straps narrow, of fine French calf put on 
"astraddle," and set down to the top of the back. 
The out-sole stout, Spanish oak, and pegged rather 
than sewed, although either is good. They will weigh 
considerably less than half as much as the clumsy, 
costly boots usually recommended for the woods; and 
the added comfort must be tested to be understood. 

The hat should be fine, soft felt with moderately 
low crown and wide brim; color to match the clothing. 

The proper covering for head and feet is no slight 
affair, and will be found worth some attention. Be 
careful that the boots are not too tight, or the hat too 
loose. The above rig will give the tourist one shirt, 
one pair of drawers and pair of socks to carry as 
extra clothing. A soft, warm blanket-bag, open at 



6 WOODCRAFT 



the ends, and just long enough to cover the sleeper, 
with an oblong square of waterproofed cotton cloth 
6x8 feet, will give warmth and shelter by night and 
will weigh together five or six pounds. This, with 
the extra clothing, will make about eight pounds of 
dry goods to pack over carries, which is enough. 
Probably, also, it will be found little enough for 
comfort. 

During a canoe cruise across the Northern Wilder- 
ness in the late summer, I met many parties at 
different points in the woods, and the amount of 
unnecessary duffle with which they encumbered 
themselves was simply appalling. Why a shrewd 
business man, who goes through with a guide and 
makes a forest hotel his camping ground nearly 
every night, should handicap himself with a five- 
peck pack-basket full of gray woolen and gum blan- 
kets, extra clothing, pots, pans and kettles, with a 
9-pound 10-bore, and two rods — yes, and an extra 
pair of heavy boots hanging astride of the gun — 
well, it is one of the things I shall never understand. 
My own load, including canoe ? extra clothing, blanket- 
bag, two days' rations, pocket-axe, rod and knap- 
sack, never exceeded 26 pounds; and I went prepared 
to camp out any and every night. 

People who contemplate an outing in the woods 
are pretty apt to commence preparations a long way 
ahead, and to pick up many trifling articles that sug- 
gest themselves as useful and handy in camp ; all well 
enough in their way, but making at last a too heavy 
load. It is better to commence by studying to ascer- 
tain just how light one can go through without espe- 
cial discomfort. A good plan is to think over the 



PREPARATIONS 



trip during leisure hours, and make out a list of 
indispensable articles, securing them beforehand, and 
have them stowed in handy fashion, so that nothing 
needful may be missing just when and where it can- 
not be procured. The list will be longer than one 
would think, but need not be cumbersome or heavy. 
As I am usually credited with making a cruise or a 
long woods tramp with exceptionally light duffle, I 
will give a list of the articles I take along — going 
on foot over carries or through the woods. 



CHAPTER II. 




KNAPSACK, HATCHET, KNIVES, TINWARE, RODS, FISHING 
TACKLE, DITTY-BAG. 

HE clothing, blanket-bag and shelter- 
cloth are all that need be described in 
that line. The next articles that I 
look after are knapsack (or pack 
basket), rod with reel, lines, flies, 
hooks, and all my fishing gear, pocket- 
axe, knives and tinware. Firstly, the 
knapsack; as you are apt to carry it 
a great many miles, it is well to have 
it right, and easy-fitting at the start. 
Don't be induced to carry a pack basket. I am aware 
that it is in high favor all through the Northern Wil- 
derness, and is also much used in many other locali- 
ties where guides and sportsmen most do congregate. 
But I do not like it. I admit that it will carry a loaf 
of bread, with tea, sugar, etc., without jamming; 
that bottles, crockery, and other fragile duffle is 
safer from breakage than in an oil-cloth knapsack. 
But it is by no means waterproof in a rain or a 
splashing head sea, is more than twice as heavy — 
always growing heavier as it gets wetter — and I had 
rather have bread, tea, sugar, etc., a little jammed 
than water-soaked. Also, it may be remarked that 



KNAPSACK AND DITTY-BAG 




KNAPSACK AND DITTY-BAG. 



10 WOODCRAFT 



man is a vertebrate animal and ought to respect his 
backbone. The loaded pack basket on a heavy carry- 
never fails to get in on the most vulnerable knob of 
the human vertebrae. The knapsack sits easy, and 
does not chafe. The one shown in the engraving is 
of good form; and the original — which I have carried 
for years — is satisfactory in every respect. It holds 
over half a bushel, carries blanket-bag, shelter tent, 
hatchet, ditty-bag, tinware, fishing tackle, clothes 
and two days' rations. It weighs, empty, just twelve 
ounces. 

The hatchet and knives shown in the engraving 
will be found to fill the bill satisfactorily so far as 
cutlery may be required. Each is good and useful of 
its kind, the hatchet especially, being the best model 
I have ever found for a "double-barreled" pocket-axe. 
And just here let me digress for a little chat on the 
indispensable hatchet; for it is the most difficult piece 
of camp kit to obtain in perfection of which I have 
any knowledge. Before I was a dozen years old I 
came to realize that a light hatchet was a sine qua 
non in woodcraft, and I also found it a most difficult 
thing to get. I tried shingling hatchets, lathing 
hatchets, and the small hatchets to be found in coun- 
try hardware stores, but none of them were satis- 
factory. I had quite a number made by blacksmiths 
who professed skill in making edge tools, and these 
were the worst of all, being like nothing on the earth 
or under it — murderous-looking, clumsy, and all too 
heavy, with no balance or proportion. I had hunted 
twelve years before I caught up with the pocket-axe 
I was looking for. It was made in Rochester, by a 
surgical instrument maker named Bushnell. It cost 



HATCHET AND KNIVES 11 

time and money to get it. I worked one rainy Sunday 
fashioning the pattern in wood. Spoiled a day going 
to Rochester, waited a day for the blade, paid $3.00 
for it, and lost a day coming home. Boat fare $1.00, 



HATCHET AND KNIVES. 

and expenses $2.00, besides three days lost time, with 
another rainy Sunday for making leather sheath and 
hickory handle. 

My witty friends, always willing to help me out in 
figuring the cost of my hunting and fishing gear, 



12 WOODCRAFT 



made the following business-like estimate, which they 
placed where I would be certain to see it the first 
thing in the morning. Premising that of the five 
who assisted in that little joke, all stronger, bigger 
fellows than myself, four have gone "where they 
never see the sun," I will copy the statement as it 
stands to-day, on paper yellow with age. For I have 
kept it over forty years. 

A WOODSMAN, 

Dr. 

To getting up one limber-go-shiftless pocket-axe : 

Cost of blade $3 06 

Fare on boat 100 

Expenses for 3 days 3 00 

Three days lost time at $1.25 per day .' 3 75 

Two days making model, handle and sheath, say.... 2 00 

Total $12 75 

Per contra, by actual value of axe 2 00 

Balance $10 75 

Then they raised a horse laugh, and the cost of 
that hatchet became a standing joke and a slur on 
my "business ability." What aggravated me most 
was, that the rascals were not so far out in their cal- 
culation. And was I so far wrong? That hatchet 
was my favorite for nearly thirty years. It has been 
"upset" twice by skilled workmen; and, if my friend 
"Bero" has not lost it, is still in service. 

Would I have gone without it any year for one or 
two dollars? But I prefer the double blade. I want 
one thick, stunt edge for knots, deer's bones, etc., 
and a fine, keen edge for cutting clear timber. 

A word as to knife, or knives. These are of prime 



COOKING UTENSILS 13 



necessity, and should be of the best, both as to shape 
and temper. The "bowies" and "hunting knives" 
usually kept on sale, are thick, clumsy affairs, with 
a sort of ridge along the middle of the blade, mur- 
derous-looking, but of little use; rather fitted to 
adorn a dime novel or the belt of "Billy the Kid," 
than the outfit of the hunter. The one shown in the 
cut is thin in the blade, and handy for skinning, cut- 
ting meat, or eating with. The strong double-bladed 
pocket knife is the best model I have yet found, and, 
in connection with the sheath knife, is all sufficient 
for camp use. It is not necessary to take table cut- 
lery into the woods. A good fork may be improvised 
from a beech or birch stick; and the half of a fresh- 
water mussel shell, with a split stick by way of 
handle, makes an excellent spoon. 

My entire outfit for cooking and eating dishes com- 
prises five pieces of tinware. This is when stopping 
in a permanent camp. When cruising and tramping, 

1 take just two pieces in the knapsack. 

I get a skillful tinsmith to make one dish as fol- 
lows: Six inches on bottom, 6% inches on top, side 

2 inches high. The bottom is of the heaviest tin pro- 
curable, the sides of lighter tin, and seamed to be 
water-tight without solder. The top simply turned, 
without wire. The second dish to be made the same, 
but small enough to nest in the first, and also to fit 
into it when inverted as a cover. Two other dishes 
made from common pressed tinware, with the tops 
cut off and turned, also without wire. They are fitted 
so that they all nest, taking no more room than the 
largest dish alone, and each of the three smaller 
dishes makes a perfect cover for the next larger. 



14 WOODCRAFT 



The other piece is a tin camp-kettle, also of the 
heaviest tin, and seamed water-tight. It holds two 
quarts, and the other dishes nest in it perfectly, so 
that when packed the whole take just as much room 
as the kettle alone. I should mention that the strong 
ears are set below the rim of the kettle, and the bale 
falls outside, so, as none of the dishes have any 
handle, there are no aggravating "stickouts" to wear 
and abrade. The snug affair weighs, all told, two 
pounds. I have met parties in the North Woods 
whose one frying pan weighed more — with its handle 
three feet long. How ever did they get through the 
brush with such a culinary terror? 

It is only when I go into a very accessible camp 
that I take so much as five pieces of tinware along. 
I once made a ten days' tramp through an unbroken 
wilderness on foot, and all the dish I took was a ten- 
cent tin; it was enough. I believe I will tell the story 
of that tramp before I get through. For I saw more 
game in the ten days than I ever saw before or since 
in a season; and I am told that the whole region is 
now a thrifty farming country, with the deer nearly 
all gone. They were plenty enough thirty-nine years 
ago this very month. 

I feel more diffidence in speaking of rods than of 
any other matter connected with out - door sports. 
The number and variety of rods and makers; the 
enthusiasm of trout and fly "cranks;" the fact that 
angling does not take precedence of all other sports 
with me, with the humiliating confession that I am 
not above bucktail spinners, worms and sinkers, min- 
now tails and white grubs — this and these constrain 
me to be brief. 



RODS 15 



But, as I have been a fisher all my life, from my 
pinhook days to the present time; as I have run the 
list pretty well up, from brook minnows to 100-pound 
albacores, I may be pardoned for a few remarks on 
the rod and the use thereof. 

A rod may be a very high-toned, high-priced, 
aesthetic plaything, costing $50 to $75, or it may be 
— a rod. A serviceable and splendidly balanced rod 
can be obtained from first class makers for less 
money. By all means let the man of money indulge 
his fancy for the most costly rod that can be pro- 
cured. He might do worse. A practical every day 
sportsman whose income is limited will find that a 
more modest product will drop his flies on the water 
quite as attractively to Salmo fontinalis. My little 
8% -foot, 4% -ounce split bamboo which the editor of 
Forest and Stream had made for me cost $10.00. 
I have given it hard usage and at times large trout 
have tested it severely, but it has never failed me. 
The dimensions of my second rod are 9% feet long 
and 5% ounces in weight. This rod will handle the 
bucktail spinners which I use for trout and bass, 
when other things have failed. I used a rod of this 
description for several summers both in Adirondack 
and western waters. It had a hand-made reel seat, 
agate first guide, was satisfactory in every respect, 
and I could see in balance, action, and appearance 
no superiority in a rod costing $25.00, which one of 
my friends sported. Charles Dudley Warner, who 
writes charmingly of woods life, has the following in 
regard to trout fishing, which is so neatly humorous 
that it will bear repeating: 

"It is well known that no person who regards his 



16 WOODCRAFT 



reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a 
fly. It requires some training on the part of the 
trout to take to this method. The uncultivated trout 
in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the 
rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing 
appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their 
primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman, how- 
ever, will use anything but a fly — except he happens 
to be alone." Speaking of rods, he says: "The rod 
is a bamboo weighing seven ounces, which has to be 
spliced with a winding of silk thread every time it 
is used. This is a tedious process; but, by fastening 
the joints in this way, a uniform spring is secured 
in the rod. No one devoted to high art would think 
of using a socket joint." 

One summer during a seven weeks' tour in the 
Northern Wilderness, my only rod was a 1% foot 
HenshaU. It came to hand with two bait-tips only; 
but I added a fly-tip, and it made an excellent "gen- 
eral fishing rod." With it I could handle a large 
bass or pickerel; it was a capital bait-rod for brook 
trout; as a fly rod it has pleased me well enough. 
It is likely to go with me again. For reel casting, 
the 5V 2 foot rod is handier. But it is not yet de- 
cided which is best, and I leave every man his own 
opinion. Only, I think one rod enough, but have 
always had more. 

And don't neglect to take what sailors call a "ditty- 
bag." This may be a little sack of chamois leather 
about 4 inches wide by 6 inches in length. Mine is 
before me as I write. Emptying the contents, I find 
it inventories as follows: A dozen hooks, running in 
size from small minnow hooks to large Limericks; 



OONTENTS OF DITTY-BAG 17 

four lines of six yards each, varying from the finest 
to a size sufficient for a ten-pound fish; three darning- 
needles and a few common sewing needles; a dozen 
buttons; sewing silk; thread, and a small ball of 
strong y&m for darning socks; sticking salve; a bit 
of shoemaker's wax; beeswax; sinkers, and a very 
fine file for sharpening hooks. The ditty-bag weighs, 
with contents, 2% ounces; and it goes in a small 
buckskin bullet pouch, which I wear almost as con- 
stantly as my hat. The pouch has a sheath strongly 
sewed on the back side of it, where the light hunting 
knife is always at hand, and it also carries a two- 
ounce vial of fly medicine, a vial of "pain killer," and 
two or three gangs of hooks on brass wire snells — 
of which, more in another place. I can always go 
down into that pouch for a water-proof match safe, 
strings, compass, bits of linen and scarlet flannel 
(for frogging), copper tacks, and other light duffle. 
It is about as handjr a piece of woods-kit as I carry. 
I hope no esthetic devotee of the fly-rod will lay 
down the book in disgust when I confess to a weak- 
ness for frogging. I admit that it is not high-toned 
sport; and yet I have got a good deal of amusement 
out of it. The persistence with which a large 
batrachian will snap at a bit of red flannel after being 
several times hooked on the same lure, and the comi- 
cal way in which he will scuttle off with a quick 
succession of short jumps after each release; the 
cheerful manner in which, after each bout, he will 
tune up his deep, bass pipe— ready for another greedy 
snap at an ibis fly or red rag— is rather funny. And 
his hind legs, rolled in meal and nicely browned, are 
preferable to trout or venison. 



CHAPTER III. 



GETTING LOST. — CAMPING OUT. — ROUGHING IT OR SMOOTH- 
ING IT. — INSECTS. — CAMPS, AND HOW 
TO MAKE THEM. 

ITH a large majority of prospective 
tourists and outers, "camping out" is 
a leading factor in the summer vaca- 
tion. And during the long winter 
months they are prone to collect in 
little knots and talk much of camps, 
fishing, hunting, and "roughing it." 
The last phrase is very popular and 
always cropping out in the talks on 
matters pertaining to a vacation in 
the woods. I dislike the phrase. We do not go to 
the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we 
go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home; 
in towns and cities; in shops, offices, stores, banks — 
anywhere that we may be placed — with the necessity 
always present of being on time and up to our work; 
of providing for the dependent ones; of keeping up, 
catching up, or getting left. "Alas for the life-long 
battle, whose bravest slogan is bread." 

As for the few fortunate ones who have no call to 
take a hand in any strife or struggle, who not only 




TAKE IT EASY 19 



have all the time there is, but a great deal that they 
cannot dispose of with any satisfaction to themselves 
or anybody else — I am not writing for them; but 
only to those of the world's workers who go, or would 
like to go, every summer to the woods. And to these 
I would say, don't rough it; make it as smooth, as 
restful and pleasurable as you can. 

To this end you need pleasant days and peaceful 
nights. You cannot afford to be tormented and 
poisoned by insects, nor kept awake at night by cold 
and damp, nor to exhaust your strength by hard 
tramps and heavy loads. Take it easy, and always 
keep cool. Nine men out of ten, on finding them- 
selves lost in the woods, fly into a panic, and quarrel 
with the compass. Never do that. The compass is 
always right, or nearly so. It is not many years 
since an able-bodied man — sportsman of course — lost 
his way in the North Woods, and took fright, as 
might be expected. He was well armed - and well 
found for a week in the woods. What ought to have 
been only an interesting adventure, became a tragedy. 
He tore through thickets and swamps in his senseless 
panic, until he dropped and died through fright, 
hunger and exhaustion. 

A well authenticated story is told of a guide in the 
Oswegatchie region, who perished in the same way. 
Guides are not infallible; I have known more than 
one to get lost. Wherefore, should you be tramping 
through a pathless forest on a cloudy day, and 
should the sun suddenly break from under a cloud in 
the northwest about noon, don't be scared. The last 
day is not at hand, and the planets have not become 
mixed; only, you are turned. You have gradually 



20 WOODCRAFT 



swung around, until you are facing northwest when 
you meant to travel south. It has a muddling effect 
on the mind — this getting lost in the Woods. But, if 
you can collect and arrange your gray brain matter, 
and suppress all panicky feeling, it is easily got 
along with. For instance; it is morally certain that 
you commenced swinging to southwest, then west, 
to northwest. Had you kept on until you were head- 
ing directly north, you could rectify your course sim- 
ply by following a true south course. But, as you 
have varied three-eighths of the circle, set your com- 
pass and travel by it to the southeast, until, in your 
judgment, you have about made up the deviation; 
then go straight south, and you will not be far wrong. 
Carry the compass in your hand and look at it every 
few minutes; for the tendency to swerve from a 
straight course when a man is once lost — and nearly 
always to the right — is a thing past understanding. 

As regards poisonous insects, it may be said that, 
to the man with clean, bleached, tender skin, they 
are, at the start, an unendurable torment. No one 
can enjoy life with a smarting, burning, swollen face, 
while the attacks on every exposed inch of skin are 
persistent and constant. I have seen a young man 
after two days' exposure to these pests come out of 
the woods with one eye entirely closed and the brow 
hanging over it like a clam shell, while face and 
hands were almost hideous from inflammation and 
puffiness. The St. Regis and St. Francis Indians, 
although born and reared in the woods, by no means 
make light of the black fly. 

It took the man who could shoot Phantom Falls 
to find out, "Its bite is not severe, nor is it ordinarily 



INSECT PESTS 21 



poisonous. There may be an occasional exception to 
this rule; but beside the bite of the mosquito, it is 
comparatively mild and harmless." And again: 
"Gnats * * * in my way of thinking, are much 
worse than the black fly or mosquito." So says 
Murray. Our observations differ. A thousand mos- 
quitoes and as many gnats can bite me without leav- 
ing a mark, or having any effect save the pain of 
the bite while they are at work. But each bite of the 
black fly makes a separate and distinct boil, that will 
not heal and be well in two months. 

While fishing for brook trout in July last, I ran 
into a swarm of them on Moose River, and got badly 
bitten. I had carelessly left my medicine behind. 
On the first of October the bites had not ceased to 
be painful, and it was three months before they dis- 
appeared entirely. Frank Forester says, in his "Fish 
and Fishing," page 371, that he has never fished for 
the red-fleshed trout of Hamilton county, "being 
deterred therefrom by dread of that curse of the 
summer angler, the black fly, which is to me espe- 
cially venomous." 

"Adirondack Murray" gives extended directions 
for beating these little pests by the use of buckskin 
gloves with chamois gauntlets, Swiss mull, fine mus- 
lin, etc. Then he advises a mixture of sweet oil and 
tar, which is to be applied to face and hands; and he 
adds that it is easily washed off, leaving the skin 
soft and smooth as an infant's; all of which is true. 
But, more than forty years' experience in the woods 
has taught me that the following receipt is infallible 
anywhere that sancudos, moquims, or our own poison- 
ous insects do most abound. 



22 WOODCRAFT 



It was published in Forest and Stream in the sum- 
mer of 1880, and again in '83. It has been pretty 
widely quoted and adopted, and I have never known 
it to fail: Three ounces pine tar, two ounces castor 
oil, one ounce pennyroyal oil. Simmer all together 
over a slow fire, and bottle for use. You will hardly 
need more than a two-ounce vial full in a season. 
One ounce has lasted me six weeks in the woods. 
Rub it in thoroughly and liberally at first, and after 
you have established a good glaze, a little replenish- 
ing from day to day will be sufficient. And don't 
fool with soap and towels where insects are plenty. 
A good safe coat of this varnish grows better the 
longer it is kept on — and it is cleanly and whole- 
some. If you get your face and hands crocky or 
smutty about the camp-fire, wet the corner of your 
handkerchief and rub it off, not forgetting to apply 
the varnish at once, wherever you have cleaned it 
off. Last summer I carried a cake of soap and a 
towel in my knapsack through the North Woods for 
a seven weeks' tour, and never used either a single 
time. When I had established a good glaze on the 
skin, it was too valuable ^to be sacrificed for any 
weak whim connected with soap and water. When 
I struck a woodland hotel, I found soap and towels 
plenty enough. I found the mixture gave one's face 
the ruddy tanned look supposed to be indicative of 
health and hard muscle. A thorough ablution in the 
public wiash basin reduced the color, but left the skin 
very soft and smooth; in fact, as a lotion for the 
skin it is excellent. It is a soothing and healing 
application for poisonous bites already received. 

I have given some space to the insect question, but 



BEWARE THE BLACK FLY 23 

no more than it deserves or requires. The venomous 
little wretches are quite important enough to spoil 
many a well planned trip to the woods, and it is best 
to beat them from the start. You will find that 
immunity from insects and a comfortable camp are 
the two first and most indispensable requisites of 
an outing in the woods. And just here I will briefly 
tell how a young friend of mine went to the woods, 
some twenty-five years ago. He was a bank clerk, 
and a good fellow withal, with a leaning toward 
camp-life. 

For months, whenever we met, he would introduce 
his favorite topics, fishing, camping out, etc. At last 
in the hottest of the hot months, the time came. He 
put in an appearance with a fighting cut on his hair, 
a little stiff straw hat, and a soft skin, bleached by 
long confinement in a close office. I thought he 
looked a little tender; but he was sanguine. He 
could rough it, could sleep on the bare ground with 
the root of a tree for a pillow; as for mosquitoes 
and punkies, he never minded them. 

We went in a party of five — two old hunters and 
three youngsters, the latter all enthusiasm and pluck 
— at first. Toward the last end of a heavy eight- 
mile tramp, they grew silent, and slapped and 
scratched nervously. Arriving at the camping spot, 
they worked fairly well, but were evidently weaken- 
ing a little. By the time we were ready to turn in 
they were reduced pretty well to silence and suffer- 
ing — especially the bank clerk, Jean L. The punkies 
were eager for his tender skin, and they were rank 
poison to him. He muffled his head in a blanket 
and tried to sleep, but it was only a partial success. 



24 WOODCRAFT 



When, by suffocating himself, he obtained a little 
relief from insect bites, there were stubs and knotty 
roots continually poking themselves among his ribs, 
or digging into his backbone. 

I have often had occasion to observe that stubs, 
roots and small stones, etc., have a perverse ten- 
dency to abrade the anatomy of people unused to the 
woods. Mr. C. D. Warner has noticed the same 
thing, I believe. 

On the whole, Jean and the other youngsters be- 
haved very well. Although they turned out in the 
morning with red, swollen faces and half closed eyes, 
they all went trouting and caught about 150 small 
trout between them. They did their level bravest to 
make a jolly thing of it; but Jean's attempt to watch 
a deerlick, resulted in a wetting through the sudden 
advent of a shower; and the shower drove about all 
the punkies and mosquitoes in the neighborhood 
under our roof for shelter. I never saw them more 
plenty or worse. Jean gave in and varnished his pelt 
thoroughly with my "punkie dope," as he called 
it; but, too late; the mischief was done. And the 
second trial was worse to those youngsters than the 
first. More insects. More stubs and knots. Owing 
to these little annoyances, they arrived at home 
several days before their friends expected them — 
leaving enough rations in camp to last Old Sile and 
the writer a full week. And the moral of it is, if 
they had fitted themselves for the woods before going 
there, the trip would have been a pleasure instead of 
a misery. 

One other little annoyance I will mention, as a 
common occurrence among those who camp out; this 



PILLOWS 25 



is the lack of a pillow. I suppose I have camped 
fifty times with people, who, on turning in, were 
squirming around for a long time, trying to get a 
rest for the head. Boots are the most common re- 
sort. But, when you place a boot-leg — or two of 
them — under your head, they collapse, and make a 
head-rest less than half an inch thick. Just why it 
never occurs to people that a stuffing of moss, leaves, 
or hemlock browse, would fill out the boot-legs and 
make a passable pillow, is another conundrum I can- 
not answer. But, there is another and better way of 
making a pillow for camp use, which I will describe 
further on. 

And now I wish to devote some space to one of 
the most important adjuncts of woodcraft, i. e., 
camps; how to make them, and how to make them 
comfortable. There are camps, and camps. There 
are camps in the North Woods that are really fine 
villas, costing thousands of dollars, and there are log- 
houses, and shanties, and bark camps, and A tents, 
and walled tents, shelter tents and shanty tents. But, 
I assume that the camp best fitted to the wants of 
the average outer is the one that combines the essen- 
tials of dryness, lightness, portability, cheapness, 
and is easily and quickly put up. Another essential 
is, that it must admit of a bright fire in front by 
night or day. I will give short descriptions of the 
forest shelters (camps) I have found handiest and 
most useful. 

Firstly, I will mention a sort of camp that was 
described in a sportsman's paper, and has since been 
largely quoted and used. It is made by fastening a 
horizontal pole to a couple of contiguous trees, and 



26 WOODCRAFT 



then putting on a heavy covering of hemlock boughs, 
shingling them with the tips downward, of course. 
A fire is to be made at the roots of one of the trees. 
This, with plenty of boughs, may be made to stand a 
pretty stiff rain; but it is only a damp arbor, and no 
camp, properly speaking. A forest camp should 
always admit of a bright fire in front, with a lean-to 
or shed roof overhead, to reflect the fire heat on the 
bedding below. Any camp that falls short of this, 
lacks the requirements of warmth, brightness and 
healthfulness. This is why I discard all close, canvas 
tents. 

The simplest and most primitive of all camps is 
the "Indian camp." It is easily and quickly made; 
is warm and comfortable, and stands a pretty heavy 
rain when properly put up. This is how it is made: 
Let us say you are out and have slightly missed your 
way. The coming gloom warns you that night is 
shutting down. You are no tenderfoot. You know 
that a place of rest is essential to health and com- 
fort through the long, cold, November night. You 
dive down the first little hollow until you strike a 
rill of water, for water is a prime necessity. As you 
draw your hatchet you take in the whole situation at 
a glance. The little stream is gurgling downward 
in a half choked frozen way. There is a huge sod- 
dened hemlock lying across it. One clip of the hatchet 
shows it will peel. There is plenty of smaller tim- 
ber standing around; long, slim poles, with a tuft of 
foliage on top. Five minutes suffice to drop one of 
these, cut a twelve-foot pole from it, sharpen the 
pole at each end, jam one end into the ground and 
the other into the rough bark of a scraggy hemlock, 



THE INDIAN CAMP 



27 




"r%5^8 



^ 
^ 



m&M^ 









$$(JJ*; ..^ac^ t t ^'^'" 



;W>4**„ 



INDIAN CAMP. 



28 WOODCRAFT 



and there is your ridge pole. Now go — with your 
hatchet — for the bushiest and most promising young 
hemlocks within reach. Drop them and draw them 
to camp rapidly. Next, you need a fire. There are 
fifty hard, resinous limbs sticking up from the prone 
hemlock; lop off a few of these, and split the largest 
into match timber; reduce the splinters to shavings, 
scrape the wet leaves from your prospective fire- 
place, and strike a match on the balloon part of your 
trousers. If you are a woodsman you will strike but 
one. Feed the fire slowly at first; it will gain fast. 
When you have a blaze ten feet high, look at your 
watch. It is 6 P. M. You don't want to turn in 
before 10 o'clock, and you have four hours to kill 
before bed-time. Now, tackle the old hemlock; take 
oif every dry limb, and then peel the bark and bring 
it to camp. You will find this takes an hour or more. 
Next, strip every limb from your young hemlocks, 
and shingle them onto your ridge-pole. This will 
make a sort of bear den, very well calculated to give 
you a comfortable night's rest. The bright fire will 
soon dry the ground that is to be your bed, and you 
will have plenty of time to drop another small hem- 
lock and make a bed of browse a foot thick. You do 
it. Then you make your pillow. Now, this pillow is 
essential to comfort and very simple. It is half a 
yard of muslin, sewed up as a bag, and filled with 
moss or hemlock browse. You can empty it and put 
it in your pocket, where it takes up about as much 
room as a handkerchief. You have other little mus- 
lin bags — an' you be wise. One holds a couple of 
ounces of good tea; another, sugar; another is kept 
to put your loose duffle in; money, match safe, 



NIGHT IN CAMP 29 

pocket-knife. You have a pat of butter and a bit of 
pork, with a liberal slice of brown bread; and before 
turning in you make a cup of tea, broil a slice of 
pork, and indulge in a lunch. 

Ten o'clock comes. The time has not passed 
tediously. You. are warm, dry and well-f ed. Your 
old friends, the owls, come near the fire-light and 
salute you with their strange wild notes; a distant 
fox sets up for himself with his odd, barking cry 
and you turn in. Not ready to sleep just yet. 

But you drop off; and it is two bells in the morn- 
ing watch when you waken with a sense of chill and 
darkness. The fire has burned low, and snow is 
falling. The owls have left, and a deep silence 
broods over the cold, still forest. You rouse the fire, 
and, as the bright light shines to the furthest recess- 
es of your forest den, get out the little pipe, and 
reduce a bit of navy plug to its lowest denomination. 
The smoke curls lazily upward; the fire makes you 
warm and drowsy, and again you lie down — to again 
awaken with a sense of chilliness — to find the fire 
burned low, and daylight breaking. You have slept 
better than you would in your own room at home. 
You have slept in an "Indian camp." 

You have also learned the difference between such 
a simple shelter and an open air bivouac under a tree 
or beside an old log. 

Another easily made and very comfortable camp is 
the "brush shanty," as it is usually called in North- 
ern Pennsylvania. The frame for such a shanty is 
a cross-pole resting on two crotches about six feet 
high, and enough straight poles to make a founda- 
tion for the thatch. The poles are laid about six 



30 WOODCRAFT 



inches apart, one end on the ground, the other on the 
crosspole, and at a pretty sharp angle. The thatch 
is made of the fan-like boughs cut from the thrifty- 
young hemlock, and are to be laid bottom upward 
and feather end down. Commence to lay them from 
the ground, and work up to the crosspole, shingling 
them carefully as you go, If the thatch be laid a foot 
in thickness, and well done, the shanty will stand 
a pretty heavy rain — better than the average bark 
roof, which is only rain-proof in dry weather. 

A bark camp, however, may be a very neat sylvan 
affair, provided you are camping where spruce or 
balsam fir may be easily reached, and in the hot 
months when bark will "peel"; and you have a day 
in which to work at a camp. The best bark camps 
I have ever seen are in the Adirondacks. Some of 
them are rather elaborate in construction, requiring 
two or more days' hard labor by a couple of guides. 
When the stay is to be a long one, and the camp per- 
manent, perhaps it will pay. 

As good a camp as I have ever tried — perhaps the 
best — is the "shanty-tent," shown in the illustration. 
It is easily put up, is comfortable, neat, and abso- 
lutely rain-proof. Of course, it may be of any re- 
quired size; but, for a party of two, the following 
dimensions and directions will be found all sufficient: 

Firstly, the roof. This is merely a sheet of strong 
cotton cloth 9 feet long by 4 or 4V 2 feet in width. 
The sides, of the same material, to be 4% feet deep 
at front, and 2 feet deep at the back. This gives 7 
feet along the edge of the roof, leaving 2 feet for 
turning down at the back end of the shanty. It will 
be seen that the sides must be "cut bias," to com- 



THE SHANTY-TENT 31 

pensate for the angle of the roof, otherwise the 
shanty will not be square and ship-shape when put 
up. Allowing for waste in cutting, it takes nearly 
3 yards of cloth for each side. The only labor re- 
quired in making, is to cut the sides to the proper 
shape, and stitch them to the roof. No buttons, 
strings or loops. The cloth does not even require 
hemming. It does, however, need a little water- 
proofing; for which the following receipt will answer 
very well, and add little or nothing to the weight: 
To 10 quarts of water add 10 ounces of lime, and 4 
ounces of alum; let it stand until clear; fold the 
cloth snugly and put it in another vessel, pour the 
solution on it, let it soak for 12 hours; then rinse in 
luke-warm rain water, stretch and dry in the sun, and 
the shanty-tent is ready for use. 

To put it up properly, make a neat frame as fol- 
lows: Two strong stakes or posts for the front, 
driven firmly in the ground 4% feet apart; at a dis- 
tance of 6 feet 10 inches from these, drive two other 
posts — these to be 4 feet apart — for back end of 
shanty. The front posts to be 4% feet high, the 
back rests only two feet. The former, also to incline a 
little toward each other above, so as to measure 
from outside of posts, just 4 feet at top. This gives 
a little more width at front end of shanty, adding 
space and warmth. No crotches are used in putting 
up the shanty-tent. Each of the four posts are 
fitted on the top to receive a flat-ended cross-pole, 
and admit of nailing. When the posts are squarely 
ranged and driven, select two straight, hard-wood 
rods, 2 inches in diameter, and 7 feet in length — or 
a little more. Flatten the ^nds carefully and truly, 



32 WOODCRAFT 



lay them alongside on top from post to post, and 
fasten them with a light nail at each end. Now, 
select two more straight rods of the same size, but 
a little over 4 feet in length; flatten the ends of 
these as you did the others, lay them crosswise from 
side to side, and lapping the ends of the other rods; 
fasten them solidly by driving a sixpenny nail 
through the ends and into the posts, and you have a 
square frame 7x4 feet. But it is not yet complete. 
Three light rods are needed for rafters. These are 
to be placed lengthwise of the roof at equal distances 
apart, and nailed or tied to keep them in place. Then 
take two straight poles a little over 7 feet long, and 
some 3 inches in diameter. These are to be accu- 
rately flattened at the ends, and nailed to the bot- 
tom of the posts, snug to the ground, on outside of 
posts. A foot-log and head-log are indispensable. 
These should be about 5 inches in diameter, and of 
a length to just reach from outside to outside of 
posts. They should be squared at ends, and the foot- 
log placed against the front post, outside, and held 
firmly in place by two wooden pins. The head-log 
is fastened the same way, except that it goes against 
the inside of the back posts; and the frame is com- 
plete. Round off all sharp angles or corners with 
knife and hatchet, and proceed to spread and fasten 
the cloth. Lay the roof on evenly, and tack it truly 
to the front cross-rod, using about a dozen six-ounce 
tacks. Stretch the cloth to its bearings, and tack it 
at the back end in the same manner. Stretch it side- 
wise and tack the sides to the side poles, fore and 
aft. Tack front and back ends of sides to the front 
and back posts. Bring down the 2-foot flap of roof 



CONSTRUCTION 



at back end of shanty; stretch, and tack it snugly 
to the back posts — and your sylvan house is done. 
It is rain-proof, wind-proof, warm and comfortable. 
The foot and head logs define the limits of your 
forest dwelling; within which you may pile fragrant 
hemlock browse as thick as you please, and renew 
it from day to day. It is the perfect camp. 

You may put it up with less care and labor, and 
make it do very well. But I have tried to explain 
how to do it in the best manner; to make it all suf- 
ficient for an entire season. And it takes longer to 
tell it on paper than to do it. 

When I go to the woods with a partner, and we 
arrive at our camping ground, I like him to get his 
fishing rig together, and start out for a half day's 
exercise with his favorite flies, leaving me to make 
the camp according to my own notions of woodcraft. 
If he will come back about dusk with a few pounds 
of trout, I will have a pleasant camp and a bright 
fire for him. And if he has enjoyed wading an icy 
stream more than I have making the camp — he has 
had a good day. 

Perhaps it may not be out of place to say that the 
camp, made as above, calls for fifteen bits of timber, 
posts, rods, etc., a few shingle nailsj and some six- 
penny wrought nails, with a paper of six-ounce 
tacks. Nails and tacks will weigh about five ounces, 
and are always useful. In tacking the cloth, turn 
the raw edge in until you have four thicknesses, as 
a single thickness is apt to tear. If you desire to 
strike camp, it takes about ten minutes to draw and 
save all the nails and tacks, fold the cloth smoothly, 
and deposit the whole in your knapsack. If you wish 



34 WOODCRAFT 



to get up a shelter tent on fifteen minutes' notice, 
cut and sharpen a twelve-foot pole as for the Indian 
camp, stick one end in the ground, the other in the 
rough bark of a large tree — hemlock is best — hang 
the cloth on the pole, fasten the sides to rods, and 
the rods to the ground with inverted crotches, and 
your shelter tent is ready for you to creep under. 

The above description of the shanty-tent may seem 
a trifle elaborate, but I hope it is plain. The affair 
weighs just three pounds, and it takes a skillful woods- 
man about three hours of easy work to put it in the 
shape described. Leaving out some of the work, and 
only aiming to get it up in square shape as quickly 
as possible, I can put it up in an hour. The shanty 
as it should be, is shown in the illustration very fairly. 
And the shape of the cloth when spread out, is shown 
in the diagram on page 37. On the whole, it is the 
best form of close-sided tent I have found. It admits 
of a bright fire in front, without which a forest camp 
is just no camp at all to me. I have suffered enough 
in close, dark, cheerless, damp tents. 

More than thirty years ago I became disgusted with 
the clumsy, awkward, comfortless affairs that, under 
many different forms, went under the name of camps. 
Gradually I came to make a study of "camping out." 
It would take too much time and space, should I 
undertake to describe all the different styles and 
forms I have tried. But I will mention a few of the 
best and worst. 

The old Down East "coal cabin" embodied the prin- 
ciple of the Indian camp. The frame was simply two 
strong crotches set firmly in the ground at a distance 



HOW IT LOOKS 



35 




SHANTY-TENT AND CAMP-FIRE. 



36 WOODCRAFT 



of eight feet apart, and interlocking at top. These 
supported a stiff ridge-pole fifteen feet long, the small 
end sharpened and set in the ground. Refuse boards, 
shooks, stakes, etc., were placed thickly from the 
ridge-pole to the ground; a thick layer of straw was 
laid over these, and the whole was covered a foot 
thick with earth and sods, well beaten down. A stone 
wall five feet high at back and sides made a most ex- 
cellent fireplace; and these cabins were weather-proof 
and warm, even in zero weather. But, they were too 
cumbersome, and included too much labor for the 
ordinary hunter and angler. Also, they were open 
to the objection, that while wide enough in front, 
they ran down to a dismal, cold peak at the far end. 
Remembering, however, the many pleasant winter 
nights I had passed with the coal-burners, I bought 
a supply of oil-cloth and rigged it on the same prin- 
ciple. It was a partial success, and I used it for one 
season. But that cold, peaked, dark space was always 
back of my head, and it seemed like an iceberg. It 
was in vain that I tied a handkerchief about my head, 
or drew a stocking-leg over it.. That miserable, icy 
angle was always there. And it would only shelter 
one man anyhow. When winter drove me out of the 
woods I gave it to an enthusiastic young friend, bought 
some more oil-cloth, and commenced a shanty-tent 
that was meant to be perfect. A good many leisure 
hours were spent in cutting and sewing that shanty, 
which proved rather a success. It afforded a perfect 
shelter for a space 7x4 feet, but was a trifle heavy 
to pack, and the glazing began to crack and peel off 
in a short time. I made another and larger one of 



DIAGRAM OF SHANTY-TENT 



37 




•t H -1 ■' K'. t V. 



«^. fl 



^^tZiS^S^%^^< 



#'//>- 



^^^mmm2 



**$$* 



38 WOODCRAFT 



stout drilling, soaked in lime-water and alum; and 
this was all that could be asked when put up properly 
on a frame. But, the sides and ends being sewed to 
the roof made it unhandy to use as a shelter, when 
shelter was needed on short notice. So I ripped the 
back ends of the sides loose from the flap, leaving it, 
when spread out, as shown in the diagram. This was 
better; when it was necessary to make some sort of 
shelter in short order, it could be done with a single 
pole as used in the Indian camp, laying the tent 
across the pole, and using a few tacks to keep it in 
place at sides and center. This can be done in ten 
minutes, and makes a shelter-tent that will turn a 
heavy rain for hours. 

On the whole, for all kinds of weather, the shanty- 
tent is perhaps the best style of camp to be had at 
equal expense and trouble. The cost of it is about 
$1.25. 

For a summer camp, however, I have finally come 
to prefer the simple lean-to or shed roof. It is the 
lightest, simplest and cheapest of all cloth devices for 
camping out, and I have found it sufficient for all 
weathers from June until the fall of the leaves. It is 
only a sheet of strong cotton cloth 9x7 feet, and 
soaked in lime and alum-water as the other. The 
only labor in making it is sewing two breadths of 
sheeting together. It needs no hemming, binding, 
loops or buttons, but is to be stretched on a frame as 
described for the brush shanty, and held in place 
with tacks. The one I have used for two seasons 
cost sixty cents, and weighs 2%. pounds. It makes a 
good shelter for a party of three; and if it be found 



SPARKS 39 

a little too breezy for cool nights, a sufficient wind- 
break can be made by driving light stakes at the 
sides and weaving in a siding of hemlock boughs. 

Lastly, whatever cloth structure you may elect to 
use for a camp, do not fail to cover the roof with a 
screen of green boughs before building your camp- 
fire. Because, there will usually be one fellow in camp 
who has a penchant for feeding the fire with old 
mulchy deadwood and brush, for the fun of watching 
the blaze, and the sparks that are prone to fly upward; 
forgetting that the blazing cinders are also prone to 
drop downward on the roof of the tent, burning holes 
in it. 

I have spoken of some of the best camps I know. 
The worst ones are the A and wall tents, with all 
closed camps in which one is required to seclude 
himself through the hours of sleep in damp and dark- 
ness, utterly cut off from the cheerful, healthful light 
and warmth of the camp-fire. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CAMP-FIRES AND THEIR IMPORTANCE. — THE WASTEFUL, 

WRONG WAY THEY ARE USUALLY MADE, AND THE 

RIGHT WAY TO MAKE THEM. 



K» 



'^£i**j^zJt£ij£$2iil 



Y^lARDLY second in importance to a warm, 
t— J ' dry camp, is the camp-fire. In point 
of fact, the warmth, dryness, and health- 
fulness of a forest camp are mainly 
| dependent on the way the fire is man- 
i aged and kept up. No asthmatic or 
J consumptive patient ever regained 
I health by dwelling in a close, damp 
I tent. I once camped for a week in a 
wall tent, with a Philadelphia party, 
and in cold weather. We had a little sheet iron fiend, 
called a camp-stove. When well fed with bark, knots 
and chips, it would get red hot, and, heaven knows, 
give out heat enough. By the time we were sound 
asleep, it would subside; and we would presently 
awake with chattering teeth to kindle her up again, 
take a smoke and a nip, turn in for another nap — 
to awaken again half frozen. It was a poor substi- 
tute for the open camp and bright fire. An expe- 
rience of fifty years convinces me that a large per- 
centage of the benefit obtained by invalids from camp 



THE "GUIDES' CAMP" 41 

life is attributable to the open camp and well-man- 
aged camp-fire. And the latter is usually handled in 
a way that is too sad, too wasteful; in short, badly 
botched. For instance. 

It happened in the summer of '81 that I was mak- 
ing a canoe trip in the Northern Wilderness, and as 
Raquette Lake is the largest and about the most in- 
teresting lake in the North Woods, I spent about a 
week paddling, fishing, etc. I made my headquarters 
at Ed. Bennett's woodland hostelry, "Under the 
Hemlocks." As the hotel was filled with men, women 
and crying children, bitten to agony by punkies and 
mosquitoes, I chose to spread my blanket in a well- 
made bark shanty, which a sign-board in black and 
white said was the "Guides' Camp." 

And this camp was a very popular institution. 
Here it was that every evening, when night had set- 
tled down on forest and lake, the guests of the hotel 
would gather to lounge on the bed of fresh balsam 
browse, chat, sing and enjoy the huge camp-fire. 

No woodland hotel will long remain popular that 
does not keep up a bright, cheery, out-o'-door fire. 
And the fun of it — to an old woodsman — is in noting 
how like a lot of school children they all act about 
the fire. Ed. Bennett had a man, a North Woods 
trapper, in his employ, whose chief business was to 
furnish plenty of wood for the guides' camp, and 
start a good fire every evening by sundown. As it 
grew dark and the blaze shone high and bright, the 
guests would begin to straggle in; and every man, 
woman and child seemed to view it as a religious duty 
to pause by the fire, and add a stick or two, before 



42 WOODCRAFT 



passing into camp. The wood was thrown on end- 
wise, crosswise, or any way, so that it would burn, 
precisely as a crowd of boys make a bonfire on the 
village green. The object being, apparently, to get 
rid of the wood in the shortest possible time. 

When the fire burnt low, toward midnight, the 
guests would saunter off to the hotel; and the guides, 
who had been waiting impatiently, would organize 
what was left of the fire, roll themselves in their 
blankets, and turn in. I suggested to the trapper 
that he and I make one fire as it should be, and 
maybe they would follow suit — which would save 
half the fuel, with a better fire. But he said, "No; 
they like to build bonfires, and 'Ed.' can stand the 
wood, because it is best to let them have their own 
way. Time seems to hang heavy on their hands 
— and they pay well." Summer boarders, tourists 
and sportsmen, are not the only men who know how 
to build a camp-fire all wrong. 

When I first came to Northern Pennsylvania, thirty- 
five years ago, I found game fairly abundant; and, 
as I wanted to learn the country where deer most 
abounded, I naturally cottoned to the local hunters. 
Good fellows enough, and conceited, as all local 
hunters and anglers are apt to be. Strong, good 
hunters and axe-men, to the manor born, and prone 
to look on any outsider as a tenderfoot. Their mode 
of building camp-fires was a constant vexation to me. 
They made it a point to always have a heavy sharp 
axe in camp, and toward night some sturdy chopper 
would cut eight or ten logs as heavy as the whole 
party could lug to camp with hand-spikes. The size 



ROASTED OUT 43 



of the logs was proportioned to the muscular force in 
camp. If there was a party of six or eight, the logs 
would be twice as heavy as when we were three or 
four. Just at dark, there would be a log heap built in 
front of the camp, well chinked with bark, knots and 
small sticks; and, for the next two hours, one could 
hardly get at the fire to light a pipe. But the fire 
was sure though slow. By 10 or 11 P. M. it would 
work its way to the front, and the camp would be 
warm and light. The party would turn in, and deep 
sleep would fall on a lot of tired hunters— for two 
or three hours. By which time some fellow near the 
middle was sure to throw his blanket off with a spite- 
ful jerk, and dash out of camp with, "Holy Moses! 
I can't stand this; it's an oven." 

Another Snorer (partially waking). — "N-r-r-m, 
gu-r-r, ugh. Can't you— deaden— fire— a little?" 

First Speaker. — "Deaden h . If you want the 

fire deadened, get up and help throw off some of 
these logs." 

Another (in coldest corner of shanty) — "What's 'er 
matter — with a-you fellows? Better dig out — an' 
cool off in the snow. Shanty's comfor'ble enough." 

His minority report goes unheeded. The camp is 
roasted out. Strong hands and hand-spikes pry a 
couple of glowing logs from the front and replace 
them with two cold, green logs; the camp cools off, 
and the party takes to blankets once more — to turn 
out again at 5 A. M., and inaugurate breakfast. The 
fire is not in favorable shape for culinary operations, 
the heat is mainly on the back side, just where it isn't 
wanted. The few places level enough to set a pot or 



44 WOODCRAFT 



pan are too hot; and, in short, where there is any 
fire, there is too much. One man sees, with intense 
disgust, the nozzle of his coffee-pot drop into the fire. 
He makes a rash grab to save his coffee, and gets 
away — with the handle, which hangs on just enough 
to upset the pot. 

"Old AL," who is frying a slice of pork over a bed 
of coals that would melt a gun barrel, starts a horse 
laugh, that is cut short by a blue flash and an explo- 
sion of pork fat, which nearly blinds him. And the 
writer, taking in these mishaps in the very spirit of 
fun and frolic, is suddenly sobered and silenced by 
seeing his venison steak drop from the end of the 
"frizzling stick," and disappear between two glowing 
logs. The party manages, however, to get off on the 
hunt at daylight, with full stomachs; and perhaps the 
hearty fun and laughter more than compensate for 
these little mishaps. 

This is a digression. But I am led to it by the recol- 
lection of many nights spent in camps and around 
camp-fires, pretty much as described above. I can 
smile today at the remembrance of the calm, superior 
way in which the old hunters of that day would look 
down on me, as from the upper branches of a tall 
hemlock, when I ventured to suggest that a better fire 
could be made with half the fuel and less than half 
the labor. They would kindly remark, "Oh, you are 
a Boston boy. You are used to paying $8.00 a cord 
for wood. We have no call to save wood here. We 
can afford to burn it by the acre." Which was more 
true than logical. Most of these men had commenced 
life with a stern declaration of war against the forest; 



A WINTER CAMP 45 

and, although the men usually won at last, the battle 
was a long and hard one. Small wonder that they 
came to look upon a forest tree as a natural enemy. 
The camp-fire question came to a crisis, however, 
with two or three of these old settlers. And, as the 
story well illustrates my point, I will venture to 
tell it. 

It was in the "dark days before Christmas" that a 
party of four started from W., bound for a camp on 
Second Fork, in the deepest part of the wilderness 
that lies between Wellsboro and the Block House. 
The party consisted of Sile J., Old Al., Eli J. and 
the writer. The two first were gray-haired men, 
the others past thirty; all the same, they called us 
"the boys." The weather was not inviting, and there 
was small danger of our camp being invaded by 
summer outers or tenderfeet. It cost twelve miles 
of hard travel to reach that camp; and, though we 
started at daylight, it was past noon when we arrived. 
The first seven miles could be made on wheels, the 
balance by hard tramping. The road was execrable; 
no one cared to ride; but it was necessary to have 
our loads carried as far as possible. The. clearings 
looked dreary enough, and the woods forbidding to 
a degree, but our old camp was the picture of desola- 
tion. There was six inches of damp snow on the 
leafless brush roof, the blackened brands of our last 
fire were sticking their charred ends out of the snow, 
the hemlocks were bending sadly under their loads 
of wet snow, and the entire surroundings had a cold, 
cheerless, slushy look, very little like the ideal hunt- 
er's camp. We placed our knapsacks in the shanty, 



46 WOODCRAFT 



Eli got out his nail hatchet, I drew my little pocket- 
axe, and we proceeded to start a fire, while the two 
older men went up stream a few rods to unearth a 
full-grown axe and a bottle of old rye, which they had 
cached under a log three months before. They never 
fooled with pocket-axes. They were gone so long 
that we sauntered up the bank, thinking it might be 
the rye that detained them. We found them with 
their coats off, working like beavers, each with a stout, 
sharpened stick. There had been an October freshet, 
and a flood- jam at the bend had sent the mad stream 
over its banks, washing the log out of position and 
piling a gravel bar two feet deep over the spot where 
the axe and flask should have been. About the only 
thing left to do was to cut a couple of stout sticks, 
organize a mining company, limited, and go in; 
which they did. Sile was drifting into the side of the 
sandbar savagely, trying to strike the axe-helve, and 
Old Al. was sinking numberless miniature shafts from 
the surface in a vain attempt to strike whisky. The 
company failed in about half an hour. Sile resumed 
his coat, and sat down on a log — which was one of 
his best holds, by the way. He looked at AL; Al. 
looked at him; then both looked at us, and Sile re- 
marked that, if one of the boys wanted to go out 
to the clearings and "borry" an axe, and come back 
in the morning, he thought the others could pick up 
wood enough to tough it out one night. Of course 
nobody could stay in an open winter camp without 

an axe. 

It was my time to come to the front. I said: "You 

two just go at the camp; clean the snow off and slick 



CAMP FIRE AS IT SHOULD BE 47 




iti^AAi/W. 



CAMP-FIRE AS IT SHOULD BE MADE. 



48 WOODCRAFT 



up the inside. Put my shelter-cloth with Eli's, and 
cover the roof with them; and if you don't have just 
as good a fire tonight as you ever had, you can tie 
me to a beech and leave me there. Come on, Eli." 
And Eli did come on. And this is how we did it: 
We first felled a thrifty butternut tree ten inches in 
diameter, cut off three lengths of five feet each, and 
carried them to camp. These were the back logs. 
Two stout stakes were driven at the back of the fire, 
and the logs, on top of each other, were laid firmly 
against the stakes. The latter were slanted a little 
back, and the largest log placed at bottom, the small- 
est on top, to prevent tipping forward. A couple of 
short, thick sticks were laid with the ends against the 
bottom log by way of fire dogs; a fore stick, five feet 
long and five inches in diameter; a well built pyramid 
of bark, knots and small logs completed the camp- 
fire, which sent a pleasant glow of warmth and heat 
to the furthest corner of the shanty. For "night- 
wood," we cut a dozen birch and ash poles from four 
to six inches across, trimmed them to the tips, and 
dragged them to camp. Then we denuded a dry 
hemlock of its bark by the aid of ten-foot poles, flat- 
tened at one end, and packed the bark to camp. We 
had a bright, cheery fire from the early evening until 
morning, and four tired hunters never slept more 
soundly. 

We staid in that camp a week; and, though the 
weather was rough and cold, the little pocket-axes 
kept us well in firewood. We selected butternut for 
back logs, because, when green, it burns very slowly 
and lasts a long time. And we dragged our smaller 



OUR LUCK 49 



wood to camp in lengths of twenty to thirty feet, be- 
cause it was easier to lay them on the fire and "nig- 
ger" them in two than to cut them shorter with light 
hatchets. With a heavy axe, we should have cut 
them to lengths of five or six feet. 

Our luck, I may mention, was good— as good as 
we desired. Not that four smallish deer are anything 
to brag of for a week's hunt by four men and two 
dogs. I have known a pot-hunter to kill nine in a 
single day. But we had enough. 

As it was, we were obliged to "double trip it" in 
order to get our deer and duffle down to "Babb's." 
And we gave away more than half our venison. For 

the rest, the illustrations show the camp-fire all but 

the fire — as it should be made. 



CHAPTER V. 

FISHING, WITH AND WITHOUT FLIES. — SOME TACKLE AND 

LURES. — DISCURSIVE REMARKS ON THE GENTLE 

ART. — THE HEADLIGHT. — FROGGING. 

I HERE is probably no subject connected 
with out-door sport so thoroughly and 
exhaustively written up as fly-fishing, 
and all that pertains thereto. Fly-fish- 
ing for speckled trout always, and de- 
servedly, takes the lead. Bass fishing 
usually comes next, though some writ- 
ers accord second place to the lake trout, 
salmon trout or land-locked salmon. 
The mascalonge, as a game fish, is 
scarcely behind the small-mouthed bass, and is cer- 
tainly more gamy than the lake trout. The large- 
mouthed bass and pickerel are usually ranked about 
with the yellow perch. I don't know why; they are 
certainly gamy enough. Perhaps it is because they 
do not leap out of water when hooked. Both are 
good on the table. 

A dozen able and interesting authors have written 
books wherein trout, flies and fly-fishing are treated 
in a manner that leaves an old backwoodsman little 




IN OLD TIMES 51 

to say. Eods, reels, casting lines, flies and fish are 
described and descanted on in a way, and in a lan- 
guage, the reading whereof reduces me to temporary 
insanity. And yet I seem to recollect some bygone 
incidents concerning fish and fishing. I have a well- 
defined notion that I once stood on Flat Rock, in Big 
Pine Creek, and caught over 350 fine trout in a short 
day's fishing. Also that many times I left home on a 
bright May or June morning, walked eight miles, 
caught a twelve-pound creel of trout, and walked home 
before bedtime. 

I remember that once, in Michigan, on the advice 
of local fishermen, I dragged a spoon around High 
Bank Lake for two days, with little result save half 
a dozen blisters on my hands; and that on the next 
morning, taking a long tamarack pole and my own 
way of fishing, I caught, before 10 A. M., fifty pounds 
of bass and pickerel, weighing from two to ten pounds 
each. 

Gibson, whose spoon, line and skiff I had been 
using and who was the fishing oracle of that region, 
could hardly believe his eyes. I kept that country inn, 
and the neighborhood as well, supplied with fish for 
the next two weeks. 

It is truth to say that I have never struck salt 
or fresh waters, where edible fish were at all plenty, 
without being able to take, in some way, all that I 
needed. Notably and preferably with the fly if that 
might be. If not, then with worms, grubs, minnows, 
grasshoppers, crickets, or any sort of doodle bug 
their highnesses might affect. When a plump, two- 



52 WOODCRAFT 



pound trout refuses to eat a tinseled, feathered fraud, 
I am not the man to refuse him something more 
edible. 

That I may not be misunderstood, let me say that 
I recognize the speckled brook trout as the very em- 
peror of all game fish, and angling for him with the 
fly as the neatest, most fascinating sport attainable 
by the angler. But there are thousands of outers 
who, from choice or necessity, take their summer va- 
cations where Salmo fontinalis is not to be had. They 
would prefer him, either on the leader or the table; 
but he is not there; "And a man has got a stomach, 
and we live by what we eat." 

Wherefore, they go a-fishing for other fish. So 
that they are successful and sufficiently fed, the differ- 
ence is not so material. I have enjoyed myself 
hugely catching catties on a dark night from a skiff 
with a hand-line. 

I can add nothing in a scientific way to the litera- 
ture of fly-fishing; but I can give a few hints that 
may be conducive to practical success, as well with 
trout as with less noble fish. In fly-fishing, one serv- 
iceable four-ounce rod is enough; and a plain click 
reel, of small size, is just as satisfactory as a more 
costly affair. Twenty yards of tapered, water-proof 
line, with a six-foot leader, and a cast of two flies, 
complete the rig, and will be found sufficient. In 
common with most fly-fishers, I have mostly thrown 
a cast of three flies, but have found two just as 
effective, and handier. 

We all carry too many flies. Some of my friends 
have more than sixty dozen, aiK 1 will never use a 



THE BEST FLIES 53 

tenth of them. In the summer of '88, finding I had 
more than seemed needful, I left all but four dozen 
behind me. I wet only fifteen of them in a seven 
weeks' outing. And they filled the bill. I have no 
time or space for a dissertation on the hundreds of 
different flies made and sold at the present day. 
Abler pens have done that. I will, however, name a 
few that I have found good in widely different local- 
ities, i. e., the Northern Wilderness of New York and 
the upper waters of Northern Pennsylvania. For 
the Northern Wilderness: Scarlet ibis, split ibis, Ro- 
meyn, white-winged coachman, royal coachman, red 
hackle, red-bodied ashy and gray-bodied ashy. The 
ashies were good for black bass also. For Northern 
Pennsylvania: Queen of the waters, professor, red 
fox, coachman, black may, white-winged 'coachman, 
wasp, brown hackle, Seth Green. Ibis flies are worth- 
less here. Using the dark flies in bright water and 
clear weather, and the brighter colors for evening, 
the list was long enough. 

At the commencement of the open season, and 
until the s^oung maple leaves are half grown, bait 
will be found far more successful than the fly. At 
this time the trout are pretty evenly distributed along 
lake shores and streams, choosing to lie quietly in 
rather deep pools, and avoiding swift water. A few 
may rise to the fly in a logy, indifferent way; but the 
best way to take them is bait-fishing with well-cleansed 
angle worms or white grubs, the latter being the best 
bait I have ever tried. They take the bait sluggishly 
at this season, but, on feeling the hook, wake up to 
their normal activity and fight gamely to the last. 



54 WOODCRAFT 



When young, new-born insects begin to drop freely 
on the water, about the 20th of May, trout leave the 
pools and take to the riffles. And from this time 
until the latter part of June the fly-fisherman is in 
his glory. It may be true that the skillful bait-fisher- 
man will rather beat his creel. He cares not for 
that. He can take enough; and he had rather take 
ten trout with the fly than a score with bait. As for 
the man who goes a-fishing simply to catch fish, 
the fly-fisher does not recognize him as an angler 
at all. 

When the sun is hot and the weather grows warm, 
trout leave the ripples and take to cold springs and 
spring-holes; the largest fish, of course, monopolizing 
the deepest and coolest places, while the smaller ones 
hover around, or content themselves with shallower 
water. As the weather gets hotter, the fly-fishing 
falls off badly. A few trout of four to eight ounces 
in weight may still be raised, but the larger ones are 
lying on the bottom, and are not to be fooled with 
feathers. They will take a tempting bait when held 
before their noses — sometimes; at other times, not. 
As to raising them with a fly — as well attempt to raise 
a sick Indian with the temperance pledge. And yet, 
they may be taken in bright daylight by a ruse that I 
learned long ago, of a youngster less than half my 
age, a little, freckled, thin-visaged young man, whose 
health was evidently affected by a daily struggle with 
a pair of tow-colored side whiskers and a light 
moustache. There was hardly enough of the whole 
affair to make a door-mat for a bee hive. But he 
seemed so proud of the plant, that I forebore to rig 



AT THE SPRING-HOLE 55 

him. He was better than he looked — as often hap- 
pens. The landlord said, "He brings in large trout 
every day, when our best fly-fishermen fail." One 
night, around an out-door fire, we got acquainted, 
and I found him a witty, pleasant companion. Before 
turning in I ventured to ask him how he succeeded in 
taking large trout, while the experts only caught 
small ones, or failed altogether. 

"Go with me tomorrow morning to a spring-hole 
three miles up the river, and I'll show you," he said. 

Of course, we went. He, rowing a light skiff, and 
I paddling a still lighter canoe. The spring-hole 
was in a narrow bay that set back from the river, and 
at the mouth of a cold, clear brook; it was ten to 
twelve feet deep, and at the lower end a large balsam 
had fallen in with the top in just the right place for 
getting away with large fish, or tangling lines and 
leaders. We moored some twenty feet above the 
spring-hole, and commenced fishing, I with my 
favorite cast of flies, my friend with the tail of a min- 
now. He caught a 1V 2 -pound trout almost at the 
outset, but I got no rise; did not expect it. Then I 
went above, where the water was shallower, and 
raised a couple of half-pounders, but could get no 
more. I thought we had better go to the hotel with 
what we had, but my friend said "wait"; he went 
ashore and picked up a long pole with a bushy tip; 
it had evidently been used before. Dropping down 
to the spring-hole, he thrust the tip to the bottom and 
slashed it around in a way to scare and scatter every 
trout within a hundred feet. 

"And what does all that mean?" I asked. 



56 WOODCRAFT 



"Well," he said, "every trout will be back in less 
than an hour; and when they first come back, they 
take the bait greedily. Better take off your leader 
and try bait." 

Which I did. Dropping our hooks to the bottom, 
we waited some twenty minutes, when we had a bite, 
and, having strong tackle, soon took in a trout that 
turned the scale at 2J4 pounds. Then my turn came 
and I saved one weighing iy 2 pounds. He caught 
another of 1^ pounds, and I took one of 1 pound. 
Then they ceased biting altogether. 

"And now," said my friend, "if you will work your 
canoe carefully around to that old balsam top and 
get the light where you can see the bottom, you may 
see some large trout." 

I did as directed, and, making a telescope of my 
hand, looked intently for the bottom of the spring- 
hole. At first I could see nothing but water; then I 
made out some dead sticks, and finally began to 
dimly trace the outlines of large fish. There they 
were, more than forty of them, lying quietly on the 
bottom like suckers, but genuine brook trout, every 
one of them. 

"This," said he, "makes the fifth time I have 
brushed them out of here, and I have never missed 
taking from two to five large trout. I have two other 
places where I always get one or two, but this is the 
best.' , 

At the hotel we found two fly-fishers who had been 
out all the morning. They each had three or four 
small trout. 

During the next week we worked the spring-holes 



NIGHT-FISHING 57 

daily in the same way, and always with success. 
I have also had good success by building a bright 
fire on the bank, and fishing a spring-hole by the 
light — a mode of fishing especially successful with 
catties and perch. 

A bright, bull's-eye headlight, strapped on a stiff 
hat, so that the light can be thrown where it is 
wanted, is an excellent device for night fishing. And 
during the heated term, when fish are slow and slug- 
gish, I have found the following plan works well: 
Bake a hard, well salted, water "johnny-cake," break 
it into pieces the size of a hen's egg, and drop the 
pieces into a spring-hole. This calls a host of min- 
nows, and the larger fish follow the minnows. It 
will prove more successful on perch, catties, chubs, 
etc., than on trout, however. By this plan, I have 
kept a camp of five men well supplied with fish when 
their best flies failed — as they mostly do in very hot 
weather. 

Fishing for mascalonge, pickerel, and bass, is quite 
another thing, though by many valued as a sport 
scarcely inferior to fly-fishing for trout. I claim no 
especial skill with the fly-rod. It is a good day when 
I get my tail fly more than fifteen yards beyond the 
reel, with any degree of accuracy. 

My success lies mainly with the tribes of Esox and 
Micropterus. Among these, I have seldom or never 
failed during the last thirty-six years, when the water 
was free of ice; and I have had just as good luck 
when big-mouthed bass and pickerel were in the "off 
season," as at any time. For in many waters there 
comes a time — in late August and September — when 



WOODCRAFT 



neither bass nor pickerel will notice the spoon, be it 
handled never so wisely. Even the mascalonge looks 
on the flashing cheat with indifference; though a very 
hungry specimen may occasionally immolate himself. 
It was at such a season that I fished High Bank 
Lake — as before mentioned — catching from forty to 
fifty pounds of fine fish every morning for nearly two 
weeks, after the best local fishermen had assured me 
that not a decent sized fish could be taken at that 
season. Perhaps a brief description of the modes 
and means that have proved invariably successful for 
many years may afford a few useful hints, even to old 
anglers. 

To begin with, I utterly discard all modern "gangs" 
and "trains," carrying from seven to thirteen hooks 
each. They are all too small, and all too many; 
better calculated to scratch and tear, than to catch 
and hold. Three hooks are enough at the end of 
any line, and better than more. These should be 
fined or honed to a perfect point, and the abrupt 
part of the barb filed down one-half. All hooks, as 
usually made, have twice as much barb as they 
should have; and the sharp bend of the barb prevents 
the entering of the hook in hard bony structures, 
wherefore the fish only stays hooked so long as there 
is a taut pull on the line. A little loosening of the 
line and shake of the head sets him free. But no 
fish can shake out a hook well sunken in mouth or 
gills, though two-thirds of the barb be filed away. 

For mascalonge or pickerel I invariably use wire 
snells made as follows: Lay off four or more strands 
of fine brass wire 13 inches long; turn one end of the 



FROG-BAIT AND GANGS 



59 




THREE- HOOK GANG. 



60 WOODCRAFT 



wires smoothly over a No. 1 iron wire, and work the 
ends in between the strands below. Now, with a pair 
of pincers hold the ends, and, using No. 1 as a 
handle, twist the ends and body of the snell firmly to- 
gether; this gives the loop; next, twist the snell evenly 
and strongly from end to end. Wax the end of the 
snell thoroughly for two or three inches, and wax the 
tapers of two strong Sproat or O'Shaughnessy hooks, 
and wind the lower hook on with strong, waxed silk, 
to the end of the taper; then lay the second hook at 
right angles with the first, and one inch above it; 
wind this as the other, and then fasten a third and 
smaller hook above that for a lip hook. This gives 
the snell about one foot in length, with the two lower 
hooks standing at right angles, one above the other, 
and a third and smaller hook in line with the second. 

The bait is the element of success; it is made as 
follows: Slice off a clean, white pork rind, four or 
five inches long by an inch and a half wide; lay it on 
a board, and, with a sharp knife cut it as nearly to 
the shape of a frog as your ingenuity permits. Prick 
a slight gash in the head to admit the lip hook, which 
should be an inch and a half above the second one, 
and see that the fork of the bait rests securely in the 
barb of the middle hook. 

Use a stout bait-rod and a strong line. Fish from a 
boat, with a second man to handle the oars, if con- 
venient. Let the oarsman lay the boat ten feet inside 
the edge of the lily-pads, and make your cast, say* 
with thirty feet of line; land the bait neatly to the 
right, at the edge of the lily-pads, let it sink a few 
inches, and then with the tip well lowered, bring the 



PICKEREL 61 



bait around on a slight curve by a quick succession 
of draws, with a momentary pause between each; the 
object being to imitate as nearly as possible a swim- 
ming frog. If this be neatly done, and if the bait be 
made as it should be, at every short halt the legs 
will spread naturally, and the imitation is perfect 
enough to deceive the most experienced bass or pick- 
erel. When half a dozen casts to right and left have 
been made without success, it is best to move on, still 
keeping inside and casting outside the lily-pads. 

A pickerel of three pounds or more will take in all 
three hooks at the first snap; and, as he closes his 
mouth tightly and starts for the bottom, strike quickly, 
but not too hard, and let the boatman put you out 
into deep water at once, where you are safe from the 
strong roots of the yellow lily. 

It is logically certain your fish is well hooked. You 
cannot pull two strong, sharp hooks through that 
tightly closed mouth without fastening at least one of 
them where it will do most good. Oftener both will 
catch, and it frequently happens that one hook will 
catch each lip, holding the mouth nearly closed, and 
shortening the struggles of a large fish very mate- 
rially. On taking off a fish, and before casting again, 
see that the two lower hooks stand at right angles. 
If they have got turned in the struggle you can turn 
them to any angle you like; the twisted wire is stiff 
enough to hold them in place. Every angler knows 
the bold, determined manner in which the mascalonge 
strikes his prey. He will take in bait and hooks at 
the first dash, and if the rod be held stiffly, usually 
hooks himself. Barring large trout, he is the king of 



62 WOODCRAFT 



game fish. The big-mouthed bass is less savage in 
his attacks, but is a free biter. He is apt to come up 
behind and seize the bait about two-thirds of its 
length, turn, and bore down for the bottom. He will 
mostly take in the lower hooks, however, and is cer- 
tain to get fastened. His large mouth is excellent 
for retaining the hook. 

As for the small-mouthed (Micropterus dolomieu, 
if you want to be scientific), I have found him more 
capricious than any game fish on the list. One day 
he will take only dobsons, or crawfish; the next, he 
may prefer minnows, and again, he will rise to the fly 
or a bucktail spinner. 

On the whole, I have found the pork frog the most 
successful lure in his case; but the hooks and bait 
must be arranged differently. Three strands of fine 
wire will make a snell strong enough, and the hooks 
should be strong, sharp and rather small, the lower 
hooks placed only half an inch apart, and a small lip 
hook two and a quarter inches above the middle one. 
As the fork of the bait will not reach the bend of the 
middle hook, it must be fastened to the snell by a 
few stitches taken with stout thread, and the lower 
end of the bait should not reach more than a quarter 
of an inch beyond the bottom of the hook, because 
the small-mouth has a villainous trick of giving his 
prey a stern chase, nipping constantly and viciously 
at the tail, and the above arrangement will be apt to 
hook him at the first snap. Owing to this trait, some 
artificial minnows with one Or two hooks at the cau- 
dal end, are very killing — when he will take them. 

Lake, or salmon trout, may be trolled for success- 



LAKE TROUT 



fully with the above lure; but I do not much affect 
fishing for them. Excellent sport may be had with 
them, however, early in the season, when they are 
working near the shore, but they soon retire to water 
from fifty to seventy feet deep, and can only be 
caught by deep trolling or buoy-fishing. I have no 
fancy for sitting in a slow-moving boat for hours, 
dragging three or four hundred feet of line in deep 
water, a four-pound sinker tied by six feet of lighter 
line some twenty feet above the hooks. The sinker 
is supposed to go bumping along the bottom, while 
the bait follows three or four feet above it. The 
drag of the long line and the constant joggling of the 
sinker on rocks and snags, make it difficult to tell 
when one has a strike — and it is always too long 
between bites. 

Sitting for hours at a baited buoy with a hand-line, 
and without taking a fish, is still worse, as more than 
once I have been compelled to acknowledge in very 
weariness of soul. There are enthusiastic anglers, 
however, whose specialty is trolling for lake trout. A 
gentleman by the name of Thatcher, who has a fine 
residence on Racquette Lake — which he calls a camp 
— makes this his leading sport, and keeps a log of his 
fishing, putting nothing on record of less than ten 
pounds weight. His largest fish was booked at twen- 
ty-eight pounds, and he added that a well-conditioned 
salmon trout was superior to a brook trout on the 
table; in which I quite agree with him. But he 
seemed quite disgusted when I ventured to suggest 
that a well-conditioned cattie or bullhead, caught in 
the same waters— was better than either. 



64 WOODCRAFT 



"Do you call the cattie a game fish?" he asked. 

Yes; I call any fish a game fish that is taken for 
sport with hook and line. I can no more explain the 
common prejudice against the catfish and eel than I 
can tell why an experienced angler should drag a 
gang of thirteen hooks through the water — ten of 
them being worse than superfluous. "Frank Forester" 
gives five hooks as the number for a trolling gang. 
We mostly use hooks too small, and do not look after 
points and barbs closely enough. A pair of No. 1 
O'Shaugnessy, or 1V 2 Sproat, or five tapered black- 
fish hooks, will make a killing rig for small-mouthed 
bass, using No. 4 Sproat for lip hook. Larger hooks 
are better for the big-mouthed, a four-pound specimen 
of which will easily take in one's fist. A pair of 5-0 
O'Shaugnessy's, or Sproats will be found none too 
large; and as for the mascalonge and pickerel, if I 
must err, let it be on the side of large hooks and 
strong lines. 

It is idle to talk of playing the fish in water where 
the giving of a few yards insures a hopeless tangle 
among roots, tree-tops, etc. I was once fishing in 
Western waters where the pickerel ran very large, and 
I used a pair of the largest salmon hooks with tackle 
strong enough to hold a fish of fifteen pounds, with- 
out any playing; notwithstanding which, I had five 
trains of three hooks each taken off in as many days 
by monster pickerel. An expert mascalonge fisher- 
man — Davis by name — happened to take board at the 
farm house where I was staying, and he had a notion 
that he could "beat some of them big fellows;" 
g,nd he did it; with three large cojd[ hooks, a v 



STOUT TACKLE 65 

bit of fine, strong chain, twelve yards of cod-line, 
an eighteen-foot tamarack pole, and a twelve-inch 
sucker for bait. I thought it the most outlandish rig 
I had ever seen, but went with him in the early gray 
of the morning to see it tried, just where I had lost 
my hooks and fish. 

Raising the heavy bait in the air, he would give it a 
whirl to gather headway, and launch it forty feet away 
with a splash that might have been heard thirty rods. 
It looked more likely to scare than catch, but was a 
success. At the third or fourth cast we plainly saw 
a huge pickerel rise, shut his immense mouth over 
bait, hooks, and a few inches of chain, turn lazily, 
and head for the bottom, where Mr. D. let him rest 
a minute, and then struck steadily but strongly. 
The subsequent struggle depended largely on main 
strength, though there was a good deal of skill and 
cool judgment shown in the handling and landing of 
the fish. A pickerel of forty pounds or more is not 
to be snatched out of the water on his first mad rush; 
something must be yielded — and with no reel there 
is little chance of giving line. It struck me my friend 
managed his fish remarkably well, towing him back 
and forth with a strong pull, never giving him a 
rest and finally sliding him out on a low muddy bank, 
as though he were a smooth log. We took him up to 
the house and tested the size of his mouth by putting 
a quart cup in it, which went in easily. Then we 
weighed him, and he turned the scales at forty-four 
pounds. It was some consolation to find three of my 
hooks sticking in his mouth. Lastly, we had a large 
section of him stuffed and baked. It was good; but 



66 WOODCRAFT 



a ten-pound fish would have been better. The moral 
of all this — if it has any moral — is, use hooks accord- 
ing to the size of fish you expect to catch. 

And, when you are in a permanent camp, and fish- 
ing is very poor, try frogging. It is not a sport of a 
high order, though it may be called angling — and it 
can be made amusing, with hook and line. I have 
seen educated ladies in the wilderness, fishing for 
frogs with an eagerness and enthusiasm not surpassed 
by the most devoted angler with his favorite cast of 
flies. 

There are several modes of taking the festive 
batrachian. He is speared with a frog-spear; caught 
under the chin with snatch-hooks; taken with hook 
and line, or picked up from a canoe with the aid of 
a headlight, or jack-lamp. The two latter modes are 
best. 

To take him with hook and line; a light rod, six 
to eight feet of line, a snell of single gut with a 1-0 
Sproat or O'Shaughnessy hook, and a bit of bright 
scarlet flannel for bait; this is the rig. To use it, 
paddle up behind him silently, and drop the rag just 
in front of his nose. He is pretty certain to take it 
on the instant. Knock him on the head before cutting 
off his legs. It is unpleasant to see him squirm, and 
hear him cry like a child while you are sawing at his 
thigh joints. 

By far the most effective manner of frogging is by 
the headlight on dark nights. To do this most suc- 
cessfully, one man in a light canoe, a good headlight 
and a light, one-handed paddle, are the requirements. 
The frog is easily located, either by his croaking, or 



THE HEADLIGHT 67 

by his peculiar shape. Paddle up to him silently and 
throw the light in his eyes; you may then pick him up 
as you would a potato, I have known a North Woods 
guide to pick up a five-quart pail of frogs in an hour, 
on a dark evening. On the table, frogs' legs are 
usually conceded first place for delicacy and flavor. 
For an appetizing breakfast in camp, they have no 
equal, in my judgment. The high price they bring 
at the best hotels, and their growing scarcity, attest 
the value placed on them by men who know how and 
what to eat. And, not many years ago, an old pork- 
gobbling backwoodsman threw his frying-pan into 
the river because I had cooked frogs' legs in it. 
While another, equally intelligent, refused to use 
my frying-pan, because I had cooked eels in it; 
remarking sententiously, "Eels is snakes, an' I know 
it." 

It may be well, just here and now, to say a word 
on the importance of the headlight. I know of no 
more pleasant and satisfactory adjunct of a camp 
than a good light that can be adjusted to the head, 
used as a jack in floating, carried in the hand, or 
fastened up inside the shanty. Once fairly tried, it 
will never be ignored or forgotten. Not that it will 
show a deer's head seventeen rods distant with suf- 
ficient clearness for a shot — or your sights with 
distinctness enough to make it. (See Murray's Adi- 
rondacks, page 174.) 

A headlight that will show a deer plainly at six 
rods, while lighting the sights of a rifle with clearness, 
is an exceptionally good light. More deer are killed 
in floating under than over four rods. There are 



WOODCRAFT 



various styles of headlights, jack-lamps, etc., in use. 
They are bright, easily adjusted, and will show rifle 
sights, or a deer, up to 100 feet — which is enough. 
They are also convenient in camp, and better than a 
lantern on a dim forest path. 

Before leaving the subject of bait-fishing, I have 
a point or two I wish to make. I have attempted to 
explain the frog-bait, and the manner of using it, and 
I shall probably never have occasion to change my 
belief that it is, on the whole, the most killing lure 
for the entire tribes of bass and pickerel. There is, 
however, another, which, if properly handled, is al- 
most as good. It is as follows: 

Take a bass, pickerel, or yellow perch, of one 
pound or less; scrape the scales clean on the under 
side from the caudal fin to a point just forward of the 
vent. 

Next, with a sharp knife, cut up toward the 
backbone, commencing just behind the vent with a 
slant toward the tail. Run the knife smoothly along 
just under the backbone, and out through the caudal 
fin, taking about one-third of the latter, and making 
a clean, white bait, with the anal and a part of the 
caudal by way of fins. It looks very like a white 
minnow in the water; but is better, in that it is more 
showy, and infinitely tougher. A minnow soon drags 
to pieces. To use it, two strong hooks are tied on a 
wire snell at right angles, the upper one an inch 
above the lower, and the upper hook is passed 
through the bait, leaving it to draw without turning 
or spinning. The casting and handling is the same 
as with the frog-bait, and it is very killing for bass, 



SWIVELS AND SHELLS 



pickerel, and mascalonge. It is a good lure for sal- 
mon trout also; but, for him it was found better to 
fasten the bait with the lower hook in a way to give 
it a spinning motion; and this necessitates the use of 
a swivel, which I do not like; because, "a rope is as 
strong as its weakest part;" and I have more than 
once found that weakest part the swivel. If, however, 
a swivel has been tested by a dead lift of twenty to 
twenty-five pounds, it will do to trust. 

I have spoken only of brass or copper wire for 
snells, and for pickerel or mascalonge of large size 
nothing else is to be depended on. But for trout 
and bass, strong gut or gimp is safe enough. The 
possibilities as to size of the mascalonge and North- 
ern pickerel no man knows. Frank Forester thinks 
it probable that the former attains to the weight of 
sixty to eighty pounds, while he only accords the 
pickerel a weight of seventeen to eighteen pounds. 
I have seen several pickerel of over forty pounds, 
and one that turned the scale at fifty-three. And 
I saw a mascalonge on Georgian Bay that was longer 
than the Canuck guide who was toting the fish over 
his shoulder by a stick thrust in the mouth and gills. 
The snout reached to the top of the guide's head, 
while the caudal fin dragged on the ground. There 
was no chance for weighing the fish, but I hefted him 
several times, carefully, and am certain he weighed 
more than a bushel of wheat. Just what tackle 
would be proper for such a powerful fellow I am not 
prepared to say, having lost the largest specimens I 
ever hooked. My best mascalonge weighed less than 
twenty pounds. My largest pickerel still less. 



70 WOODCRAFT 



I will close this discursive chapter by offering a bit 
of advice. Do not go into the woods on a fishing tour 
without a stock of well cleansed angle-worms. Keep 
them in a tin can partly filled with damp moss, and 
in a cool, moist place. There is no one variety of 
bait that the angler finds so constantly useful as the 
worm. Izaak Walton by no means despised worm 
or bait-fishing. 



CHAPTER VI. 



CAMP COOKERY.— HOW IT IS USUALLY DONE, WITH A FEW 

SIMPLE HINTS ON PLAIN COOKING. — COOKING FIRE 

AND OUT-DOOR RANGE. 

HE way in which an average party of 
summer outers will contrive to man- 
age — or mis-manage- — the camp and 
camp-fire so as to get the greatest 
amount of smoke and discomfort at the 
least outlay of time and force, is some- 
thing past all understanding, and some- 
what aggravating to an old woodsman 
who knows some better. But it is just 
as good fun as the cynical O. W. 
can ask, to see a party of three or four enthusiastic 
youngsters organize the camp on the first day in, and 
proceed to cook the first meal. Of course, every man 
is boss, and every one is bound to build the fire, which 
every one proceeds to do. There are no back logs, 
no fore sticks, and no arrangements for level, solid 
bases on which to place frying-pans, coffee pots, etc. 
But, there is a sufficiency of knots, dry sticks, bark 
and chunks, with some kindling at the bottom, and a 
heavy volume of smoke working its way through the 




72 WOODCRAFT 



awkward-looking pile. Presently thin tongues of blue 
flame begin to shoot up through the interstices, and 
four brand new coffee pots are wriggled into level 
positions at as many different points on the bonfire. 
Four hungry youngsters commence slicing ham and 
pork, four frying-pans are brought out from as many 
hinged and lidded soap boxes — when one man yells 
out hurriedly, "Look out, Joe, there's your coffee pot 
handle coming off." And he drops his frying-pan to 
save his coffee pot, which he does, minus the spout 
and handle. Then it is seen that the flames have in- 
creased rapidly, and all the pots are in danger. A 
short, sharp skirmish rescues them, at the expense 
of some burned fingers, and culinary operations are 
the order of the hour. 

Coffee and tea are brewed with the loss of a handle 
or two, and the frying-pans succeed in scorching the 
pork and ham to an unwholesome black mess. The 
potato kettle does better. It is not easy to spoil 
potatoes by cooking them in plenty of boiling water; 
and, as there is plenty of bread with fresh butter, not 
to mention canned goods, the hungry party feed suf- 
ficiently, but not satisfactorily. Everything seems 
pervaded with smoke. The meat is scorched bitter, 
and the tea is of the sort described by Charles Dudley 
Warner, in his humorous description of "Camping 
Out": "The sort of tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, 
and disposes the drinker to hilariousness. There is 
no deception about it, it tastes of tannin, and spruce, 
and creosote." Of the cooking he says: "Everything 
has been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet — potatoes, 
tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder how every- 



THE BILL OP FARE 73 

thing could have been prepared in so few utensils. 
When you eat, the wonder ceases, everything might 
have been cooked in one pail. It is a noble meal. 
* * * The slapjacks are a solid job of work, made 
to last, and not go to pieces in a person's stomach 
like a trivial bun." 

I have before me a copy of Forest and Stream, in 
which the canoe editor, under the heading of "The 
Galley Fire," has some remarks well worth quoting. 
He says: "The question of camp cookery is one of 
the greatest importance to all readers of Forest and 
Stream, but most of all to the canoeists. From ignor- 
ance of what to carry, the canoeist falls back on 
canned goods, never healthy as a steady diet, Bruns- 
wick soups and eggs. * * * The misery of that first 
camp-fire, who has forgotten it? Tired, hungry, per- 
haps cold and wet, the smoke everywhere, the coffee 
pot melted down, the can of soup upset in the fire, the 
fiendish conduct of frying-pan and kettle, the final sur- 
render of the exhausted victim, sliding off to sleep with 
a piece of hardtack in one hand and a slice of canned 
beef in the other, only to dream of mother's hot 
biscuits, juicy steaks, etc., etc." It is very well put, 
and so true to the life. And again: "Frying, bak- 
ing, making coffee, stews, plain biscuits, the neat and 
speedy preparation of a healthy 'square meal' can be 
easily learned." Aye, and should be learned by 
every man who goes to the woods with or without a 
canoe. 

But, I was describing a first day's camping out, the 
party being four young men and one old woodsman, 
the latter going along in a double character of invited 



74 WOODCRAFT 



guest and amateur guide. When the boys are through 
with their late dinner, they hustle the greasy frying- 
pans and demoralized tinware into a corner of the 
shanty, and get out their rods for an evening's fishing. 
They do it hurriedly, almost feverishly, as youngsters 
are apt to do at the start. The 0. W. has taken no 
part in the dinner, and has said nothing save in re- 
sponse to direct questions, nor has he done anything 
to keep up his reputation as a woodsman, except to 
see that the shelter roof is properly put up and fast- 
ened. Having seen to this, he reverts to his favorite 
pastime, sitting on a log and smoking navy plug. 
Long experience has taught him that it is best to let 
the boys effervesce a little. They will slop over a 
trifle at first, but twenty-four hours will settle them. 
When they are fairly out of hearing, he takes the old 
knapsack from the clipped limb where it has been 
hung, cuts a slice of ham, butters a slice of bread, 
spreads the live coals and embers, makes a pot of 
strong green tea, broils the ham on a three-pronged 
birch fork, and has a clean, well-cooked plain dinner. 
Then he takes the sharp three-pound camp axe, and 
fells a dozen small birch and ash trees, cutting them 
into proper lengths and leaving them for the boys to 
tote into camp. Next, a bushy, heavy-topped hem- 
lock is felled, and the 0. W. proceeds leisurely to pick 
a heap of fine hemlock browse. A few handfuls suf- 
fice to stuff the muslin pillow bag, and the rest is care- 
fully spread on the port side of the shanty for a bed. 
The pillow is placed at the head, and the old Mack- 
inac blanket-bag is spread neatly over all, as a token 
of ownership and possession. If the youngsters want 



CAMP FURNITURE 75 

beds of fine, elastic browse, let 'em make their own 
beds. 

No camp-fire should be without poker and tongs. 
The poker is a beech stick four feet long by two 
inches thick, flattened at one end, with a notch cut 
in it for lifting kettles, etc. To make the tongs, take 
a tough beech or hickory stick, one inch thick by two 
feet in length, shave it down nearly one-half for a 
foot in the center, thrust this part into hot embers 
until it bends freely, bring the ends together and 
whittle them smoothly to a fit on the inside, cross- 
checking them also to give them a grip; finish off by 
chamfering the ends neatly from the outside. They 
will be found exceedingly handy in rescuing a bit of 
tinware, a slice of steak or ham, or any small article 
that happens to get dropped in a hot fire. 

And don't neglect the camp broom. It is made by 
laying bushy hemlock twigs around a light handle, 
winding them firmly with strong twine or moose wood 
bark, and chopping off the ends of the twigs evenly. 
It can be made in ten minutes. Use it to brush any 
leaves, sticks, and any litter from about the camp 
or fire. Neatness is quite as pleasant and wholesome 
around the forest camp as in the home kitchen. 
These little details may seem trivial to the reader. 
But remember, if there is a spot on earth where 
trifles make up the sum of human enjoyment, it is to 
be found in a woodland camp. All of which the 0. 
W. fully appreciates, as he finishes the above little 
jobs; after which he proceeds to spread the fire to a 
broad level bed of glowing embers, nearly covering 
the same with small pieces of hemlock bark, that 



76 WOODCRAFT 



the boys may have a decent cooking fire on their 
return. 

About sundown they come straggling in, not jubi- 
lant and hilarious, footsore rather and a little cross. 
The effervescence is subsiding, and the noise is pretty 
well knocked out of them. They have caught and 
dressed some three score of small brook trout, which 
they deposit beside the shanty, and proceed at once 
to move on the fire, with evident intent of raising a 
conflagration, but are checked by the O. W., who 
calls their attention to the fact that for all culinary 
purposes, the fire is about as near the right thing as 
they are likely to get it. Better defer the bonfire 
until after supper. Listening to the voice of en- 
lightened woodcraft, they manage to fry trout and 
make tea without scorch or creosote, and the supper 
is a decided improvement on the dinner. But the 
dishes are piled away as before, without washing. 

Then follows an hour of busy work, bringing wood 
to camp and picking browse. The wood is sufficient; 
but the browse is picked, or cut, all too coarse, and 
there is only enough of it to make the camp look 
green and pleasant — not enough to rest weary 
shoulders and backs. But, they are' sound on the 
bonfire. They pile on the wood in the usual way, 
criss-cross and haphazard. It makes a grand fire, 
and lights up the forest for fifty yards around, and 
the tired youngsters turn in. Having the advantage 
of driving a team to the camping ground, they are 
well supplied with blankets and robes. They ought 
to sleep soundly, but they don't. The usual draw- 
backs of a first night in camp are soon manifested in 



THE FIRST NIGHT 77 

uneasy twistings and turnings, grumbling at stubs, 
knots, and sticks, that utterly ignore conformity with 
the angles of the human frame. But at last, tired 
nature asserts her supremacy, and they sleep. Sleep 
soundly, for a couple of hours; when the bonfire 
having reached the point of disintegration, suddenly 
collapses with a sputtering and crackling that brings 
them to their head's antipodes, and four dazed, 
sleepy faces, look out with a bewildered air, to see 
what has caused the rumpus. All take a hand in 
putting the brands together and re-arranging the 
fire, which burns better than at first; some sleepy 
talk, one or two feeble attempts at a smoke, and they 
turn in again. But, there is not an hour during the 
remainder of the night in which some one is not pot- 
tering about the fire. 

The O. W., who has abided by his blanket-bag all 
night — quietly taking in the fun— rouses out the 
party at 4 A. M. For two of them are to fish Asaph 
Run with bait, and the other two are to try the riffles 
of Marsh Creek with the fly. As the wood is all 
burned to cinders and glowing coals, there is no 
chance for a smoky fire; and, substituting coffee for 
tea, the breakfast is a repetition of the supper. 

By sunrise the boys are off, and the O. W. has the 
camp to himself. He takes it leisurely, gets up a 
neat breakfast of trout, bread, butter, and coffee, 
cleans and puts away his dishes, has a smoke, and 
picks up the camp axe. Selecting a bushy hemlock 
fifteen inches across, he lets it down in as many min- 
utes, trims it to the very tip, piles the limbs in a heap, 
and cuts three lengths of six feet each from the butt. 



78 WOODCRAFT 



This insures browse and back logs for some time 
ahead. Two strong stakes are cut and sharpened. 
Four small logs, two of eight, and two of nine 
feet in length, are prepared, plenty of night wood is 
made ready, a supply of bright, dry hemlock bark is 
carried to camp, and the O. W. rests from his labors, 
resuming his favorite pastime of sitting on a log and 
smoking navy plug. Finally it occurs to him that he 
is there partly as guide and mentor to the younger 
men, and that they need a lesson on cleanliness. He 
brings out the frying-pans and finds a filthy-looking 
mess of grease in each one, wherein ants, flies, and 
other insects have contrived to get mixed. Does he 
heat some water, and clean and scour the pans ? Not 
if he knows himself. If he did it once he might keep 
on doing it. He is cautious about establishing pre- 
cedents, and he has a taste for entomology. He 
places the pans in the sun where the grease will 
soften and goes skirmishing for ants and doodle 
bugs. They are not far to seek, and he soon has a 
score of large black ants, with a few bugs and spiders, 
pretty equally distributed among the frying-pans. To 
give the thing a plausible look a few flies are added, 
and the two largest pans are finished off, one with a 
large earwig, the other with a thousand-legged worm. 
The pans are replaced in the shantjr, the embers are 
leveled and nearly covered with bits of dry hemlock 
bark, and the 0. W. resumes his pipe and log, 

"With such a face of Christian satisfaction, 
As good men wear, who have done a virtuous action." 
Before noon the boys are all in, and as the catch is 



CLEAN DISHES 79 

twice as numerous and twice as large as on the pre- 
vious evening, and as the weather is all that could be 
asked of the longest days in June, they are in ex- 
cellent spirits. The boxes are brought out, pork is 
sliced, a can of Indian meal comes to the front, and 
they go for the frying-pans. 

"Holy Moses! Look here. Just see the ants and 
bugs." 

Second Man. — "Well, I should say! I can see your 
ants and bugs, and go you an earwig better." 

Third Man (inverting his pan spitefully over the 
fire). — "D — n 'em, I'll roast the beggars." 

Bush D. (who is something of a cook and woods- 
man) — "Boys, I'll take the pot. I've got a thousand- 
legged worm at the head of a pismire flush, and it 
serves us right, for a lot of slovens. Dishes should 
be cleaned as often as they are used. Now let's scour 
our pans and commence right." 

Hot water, ashes, and soap soon restore the pans 
to pristine brightness; three frying-pans are filled 
with trout well rolled in meal; a fourth is used for 
cooking a can of tomatoes; the coffee is strong, and 
everything comes out without being smoked or 
scorched. The trout are browned to a turn, and 
even the O. W. admits that the dinner is a success. 
When it is over the dishes are cleaned and put away, 
and the camp slicked up, there comes the usual two 
hours of lounging, smoking, and story telling, so dear 
to the hearts of those who love to go a-fishing and 
camping. At length there is a lull in the conversa- 
tion, and Bush D. turns to the old woodsman with, 



80 WOODCRAFT 



"I thought, 'Uncle Mart/ you were going to show us 
fellows such a lot of kinks about camping out, camp- 
fires, cooking, and all that sort of thing, isn't it about 
time to begin ? Strikes me you have spent most of the 
last twenty-four hours holding down that log." 

"Except cutting some night wood and tending the 
fire," adds number two. 

The old woodsman, who has been rather silent up 
to this time, knocks the ashes leisurely from his pipe, 
and gets on his feet for a few remarks. He says, 
"Boys, a bumblebee is biggest when it's first born. 
You've learned more than you think in the last 
twenty-four hours." 

"Well, as how? Explain yourself," says Bush D. 

0. W. — "In the first place, you have learned 
better than to stick your cooking-kit into a tumbled 
down heap of knots, mulch and wet bark, only to 
upset and melt down the pots, and scorch or smoke 
everything in the pans, until a starving hound 
wouldn't eat the mess. And you have found that it 
don't take a log heap to boil a pot of coffee or fry a 
pan of trout. Also, that a level bed of live coals 
makes an excellent cooking fire, though I will show 
you a better. Yesterday you cooked the worst meal 
I ever saw in the woods. Today you get up a really 
good, plain dinner; you have learned that much in 
one day. Oh, you improve some. And I think you 
have taken a lesson in cleanliness today." 

"Yes; but we learned that of the ant — and bug," 
says number two. 

0. W. — "Just so. And did you think all the ants 
and doodle-bugs blundered into that grease in one 



THEIR LESSON 81 

morning? I put 'em in myself — to give you a 
'kink.' " 

Bush D. (disgusted). — "You blasted, dirty old sin- 
ner." 

Second Man. — "Oh, you miserable old swamp sav- 
age; I shan't get over that earwig in a month." 

Third Man (plaintively). — "This life in the woods 
isn't what it's cracked up to be; I don't relish bugs 
and spiders. I wish I were home. I'm all bitten up 
with punkies, and " 

Fourth Man (savagely). — "Dashed old woods-loafer; 
let's tie his hands and fire him in the creek." 

O. W. (placidly). — "Exactly, boys. Your remarks 
are terse, and to the point. Only, as I am going to 
show you a trick or two on woodcraft this afternoon, 
you can afford to wait a little. Now, quit smoking, 
and get out your hatchets; we'll go to work." 

Three hatchets are brought to light; one of thern 
a two-pound clumsy hand-axe, the others of an old 
time, Mt. Vernon, G. W. pattern. "And now," says 
good-natured Bush, "you give directions and we'll 
do the work." 

Under directions, the coarse browse of the previous 
night is placed outside the shanty; three active 
youngsters, on hands and knees, feel out and cut off 
every offending stub and root inside the shanty, until 
it is smooth as a floor. The four small logs are 
brought to camp; the two longest are laid at the sides 
and staked in place; the others are placed, one at the 
head, the other at the foot, also staked; and the camp 
has acquired definite outlines, and a measurable size 
of eight by nine feet. Three hemlock logs and two 



82 WOODCRAFT 



sharpened stakes are toted to camp; the stakes driven 
firmly, and the logs laid against them, one above the 
other. Fire-dogs, fore-stick, etc., complete the 
arrangement, and the camp-fire is in shape for the 
coming night, precisely as shown in the engraving on 
page 47. 

"And now," says the O. W., "if three of you will 
go down to the flat and pick the browse clean from 
the two hemlock tops, Bush and I will fix a cooking- 
range." 

"A — what?" asks one. 

"Going to start a boarding-house?" says another. 

"Notion of going into the hardware business ? " sug- 
gests a third. 

"Never mind, sonny; just 'tend to that browse, and 
when you see a smoke raising on the flat by the 
spring, come over and see the range." And the boys, 
taking a couple of blankets in which to carry the 
browse, saunter away to the flat below. 

A very leisurely, aesthetic, fragrant occupation is 
this picking browse. It should never be cut, but 
pulled, stripped or broken. I have seen a Senator, 
ex-Governor, and a wealthy banker enjoying them- 
selves hugely at it, varying the occupation by hacking 
small timber with their G. W. hatchets, like so many 
boys let loose from school. It may have looked a 
trifle undignified, but I dare say they found their 
account in it. Newport or Long Branch would have 
been more expensive, and much less healthful. 

For an hour and a half tongues and fingers are 
busy around the hemlock tops; then a thin, long 
volume of blue smoke rises near the spring, and the 



G. W. HATCHET 



83 




G. W. HATCHET. 



84 WOODCRAFT 



boys walk over to inspect the range. They find it 
made as follows: Two logs six feet long and eight 
inches thick are laid parallel, but seven inches apart 
at one end and only four at the other. They are 
bedded firmly and flattened a little on the inside. On 
the upper sides the logs are carefully hewed and 
leveled until pots, pans and kettles will sit firmly and 
evenly on them. A strong forked stake is driven at 
each end of the space, and a cross-pole, two or three 
inches thick, laid on, for hanging kettles. This com- 
pletes the range; simple, but effective. (See illus- 
tration.) The broad end of the space is for frying- 
pans, and the potato kettle. The narrow end, for 
coffee-pots and utensils of lesser diameter. From 
six to eight dishes can be cooked at the same time. 
Soups, stews, and beans are to be cooked in closely 
covered kettles hung from the cross-pole, the bottoms 
of the kettles reaching within some two inches of the 
logs. With a moderate fire they may be left to sim- 
mer for hours without care or attention. 

The fire is of the first importance. Start it with 
fine kindling and clean, dry, hemlock bark. When 
you have a bright, even fire from end to end of the 
space, keep it up with small fagots of the sweetest 
and most wholesome woods in the forest. These 
are, in the order named, black birch, hickory, sugar 
maple, yellow birch and red beech. The sticks 
should be short, and not over two inches across. 
Split wood is better than round. The out-door range 
can be made by one man in little more than an hour, 
and the camper-out, who once tries it, will never wish 
to see a "portable camp-stove" again. 



THE COOKING RANGE 



85 












m 



I i 'i'' -^'tr ill €^84 




86 WOODCRAFT 



When the sun leaves the valley in the shade of 
Asaph Mountain, the boys have a fragrant bed of 
elastic browse a foot deep in the shanty, with pillows 
improvised from stuffed boot legs, cotton handker- 
chiefs, etc. They cook their suppers on the range, 
and vote it perfect, no melting or heating handles 
too hot for use, and no smoking of dishes, or faces. 

Just at dark — which means 9 P. M. in the last week 
of June — the fire is carefully made and chinked. An 
hour later it is throwing its grateful warmth and light 
directly into camp, and nowhere else. The camp turns 
in. Not to wriggle and quarrel with obdurate stubs, 
but to sleep. And sleep they do. The sound, deep, 
restful sleep of healthy young manhood, inhaling pure 
mountain air on the healthiest bed yet known to man. 

When it is past midnight, the fire burns low, and 
the chill night breeze drifts into camp, they still do 
not rouse up, but only spoon closer, and sleep right 
on. Only the 0. W. turns out sleepily, at two bells 
in the middle watch, after the manner of hunters, 
trappers and sailors, the world over. He quietly 
rebuilds the fire, reduces a bit of navy plug to its 
lowest denomination, and takes a solitary smoke — 
still holding down his favorite log. Quizzically and 
quietly he regards the sleeping youngsters, and won- 
ders if among them all there is one who will do as he 
has done, i. e., relinquish all of what the world 
reckons as success, for the love of nature and a free 
forest life. He hopes not. And yet, as he glances 
at the calm yellow moon overhead, and listens to the 
low murmur of the little waterfall below the spring, 
he has a faint notion that it is not all loss and dross. 



GETTING BEEAKFAST 87 

Knocking the ashes from his pipe he prepares to 
turn in, murmuring to himself, half sadly, half humor- 
ously, "I have been young, and now I am old; yet 
have I never seen the true woodsman forsaken, or 
his seed begging bread — or anything else, so to 
speak — unless it might be a little tobacco or a nip of 
whisky." And he creeps into his blanket-bag, backs 
softly up to the outside man, and joins the snorers. 

It is broad daylight when he again turns out, leav- 
ing the rest still sleeping soundly. He starts a lively 
fire in the range, treats two coffee pots to a double 
handful of coffee and three pints of water each, sets on 
the potato kettle, washes the potatoes, then sticks his 
head into the camp, and rouses the party with a 
regular second mate's hail. "Sta-a-ar-bo'lin's aho- 
o-o-y. Turn out, you beggars. Come on deck and 
see it rain." And the boys do turn out. Not with 
wakeful alacrity, but in a dazed, dreamy, sleepy way. 
They open wide eyes, when they see that the sun is 
turning the sombre tops of pines and hemlocks to a 
soft orange yellow. 

"I'd have sworn," says one, "that I hadn't slept 
over fifteen minutes by the watch." 

"And I," says another, "was just watching the fire, 
when I dropped off in a doze. In about five minutes 
I opened my eyes, and I'll be shot if it wasn't sun- 
rise." 

"As for me," says a third, "I don't know as I've 
slept at all. I remember seeing somebody poking 
the fire last night. Next thing I knew, some lunatic 
was yelling around camp about "starbolin's/ and 
'turning out.' Guess I'll lay down and have my nap 
out." 



88 WOODCRAFT 



"Yes," says the O. W., "I would. If I was a 
healthy youngster, and couldn't get along with seven 
hours and a half of solid sleep, I'd take the next 
forenoon for it. Just at present, I want to remark 
that I've got the coffee and potato business under- 
way, and I'll attend to them. If you want anything 
else for breakfast, you'll have to cook it." 

And the boys, rising to the occasion, go about the 
breakfast with willing hands. It is noticeable, how- 
ever, that only one pan of trout is cooked, two of 
the youngsters preferring to fall baek on broiled ham, 
remarking that brook trout is too rich and cloying 
for a steady diet. Which is true. The appetite for 
trout has very sensibly subsided, and the boyish 
eagerness for trout fishing has fallen off immensely. 
Only two of the party show any interest in the riffles. 
They stroll down stream leisurely, to try their flies 
for an hour or two. The others elect to amuse them- 
selves about the camp, cutting small timber with their 
little hatchets? picking fresh browse, or skirmishing 
the mountain side for wintergreen berries and sassa- 
fras. The fishermen return in a couple of hours, 
with a score of fair-sized trout. They remark apolo- 
getically that it is blazing hot — and there are plenty 
of trout ahead. Then they lean their rods against 
the shanty, and lounge on the blankets, and smoke 
and doze. 

It is less than forty-eight hours since the cross-pole 
was laid; and, using a little common sense woodcraft, 
the camp has already attained to a systematic no- 
system of rest, freedom and idleness. Every man is 
free to "loaf, and invite his soul." There is good 



PROGRESS? 89 



trouting within an hour's walk for those who choose, 
and there is some interest, with a little exercise, in 
cooking and cutting night wood, slicking up, etc. 
But the whole party is stricken with "camp-fever," 
"Indian laziness," the dolce far niente. It is over and 
around every man, enveloping him as with a roseate 
blanket from the Castle of Indolence. 

It is the perfect summer camp. 

And it is no myth; but a literal resume of a five 
days' outing at Poplar Spring, on Marsh Creek, in 
Pennsylvania. Alas, for the beautiful valley, that 
once afforded the finest camping grounds I have ever 
known. 

"Never any more 

Can it be 

Unto me (or anybody else) 

As before." 

A huge tannery, six miles above Poplar Spring, 
poisons and blackens the stream with chemicals, bark 
and ooze. The land has been brought into mar- 
ket, and every acre eagerly bought up by actual 
settlers. The once fine covers and thickets are con- 
verted into fields thickly dotted with blackened 
stumps. And, to crown the desolation, heavy laden 
trains of "The Pine Creek and Jersey Shore R. R." 
go thundering almost hourly over the very spot where 
stood our camp by Poplar Spring. 

Of course, this is progress; but, whether backward 
or forward, had better be decided sixty years hence. 
And, just what has happened to the obscure valley of 
Marsh Creek, is happening today, on a larger scale, 



90 WOODCRAFT 



all over the land. It is the same old story of grab 
and greed. Let us go on the "make" today, and 
"whack up" tomorrow; cheating each other as 
villainously as we may, and posterity be d — d. 
"What's all the w-u-u-rld to a man when his wife is 
a widdy?" 

This is the moral: From Maine to Montana; from 
the Adirondacks to Alaska; from the Yosemite to the 
Yellowstone, the trout-hog, the deer-wolf, the netter, 
the skin-hunter, each and all have it their own way; 
and the law is a farce — only to be enforced where 
the game has vanished forever. Perhaps the man- 
child is born who will live to write the moral of all 
this — when it is too late. 



CHAPTER VII. 



MORE HINTS ON COOKING, WITH SOME SIMPLE RECEIPTS. — 

BREAD, COFFEE, POTATOES, SOUPS, STEWS, BEANS, 

FISH, MEAT, VENISON. 

"We may live without friends, we may live with- 
out books, 
But civilized man cannot live without cooks." 

T is probably true that nothing con- 
nected with out-door life in camp is so 
badly botched as the cooking. It is not 
through any lack of the raw material, 
which may be had of excellent quality 
in any country village. It is not from 
lack of intelligence or education, for the 
men you meet in the woods, as outers 
or sportsmen, are rather over than un- 
der the average in these respects. Per- 
haps it is because it has been dinned into our ears 
from early childhood, that an appetite, a healthy long- 
ing for something good to eat, a tickling of the palate 
with wholesome, appetizing food, is beneath the at- 
tention of an aesthetic, intellectual man. Forgetting 
that the entire man, mental and physical, depends on 
proper aliment and the healthy assimilation thereof; 




92 WOODCRAFT 



and that a thin, dyspeptic man can no more keep up 
in the struggle of life, than the lightning express can 
make connections, drawn by a worn out locomotive. 
I have never been able to get much help from 
cook-books, or the scores of recipes published in 
various works on out-door sport. Take, for example, 
Frank Forester's "Fish and Fishing." He has more 
than seventy recipes for cooking fish, over forty of 
which contain terms or names in French. I dare 
say they are good — for a first-class hotel. I neither 
cook or converse in French, and I have come to 
know that the plainest cooking is the best, so that it 
be well done and wholesome. In making up the 
rations for camping out, the first thing usually 
attended to is bread. And if this be light, well-made 
bread, enough may be taken along to last four or 
five days, and this may be eked out with Boston 
crackers, or the best hard-tack, for a couple or three 
days more, without the least hardship. Also, there 
are few camps in which some one is not going out to 
the clearings every few days for mail, small stores, 
etc., and a supply of bread can be arranged for, with 
less trouble than it can be made. There are times, 
however, when this is not feasible, and there are men 
v/ho prefer warm bread all the time. In this case 
the usual resort, from Maine to Alaska, is the univer- 
sal flapjack. I do not like it; I seldom make it; it 
is not good. But it may be eaten, with maple syrup 
or sugar and butter. I prefer a plain water Johnny- 
cake, made as follows (supposing your tins are some- 
thing like those described in Chapter II.) : Put a little 
more than a pint of water in your kettle and bring it 



BREAD 



to a sharp boil, adding a small teaspoonful of salt, 
and two of sugar. Stir in slowly enough good corn 
meal to make a rather stiff mush, let it cook a few 
minutes, and set it off the fire; then grease your 
largest tin dish and put the mush in it, smoothing it 
on top. Set the dish on the out-door range described 
in the previous chapter, with a lively bed of coals 
beneath — but no blaze. Invert the second sized tin 
over the cake, and cover the dish with bright live 
coals, that bottom and top may bake evenly, and 
give it from thirty-five to forty minutes for baking. 
It makes wholesome, palatable bread, which gains 
on the taste with use. 

Those who prefer wheat bread can make a passable 
article by using the best wheat flour with baking- 
powders, mixing three tablespoonfuls of the powders 
to a quart of flour. Mix and knead thoroughly with 
warm water to a rather thin dough, and bake as 
above. Use the same proportions for pancake batter. 
When stopping in a permanent camp with plenty of 
time to cook, excellent light bread may be made by 
using dry yeast cakes, though it is not neces- 
sary to "set" the sponge as directed on the papers. 
Scrape and dissolve half a cake of the yeast in a gill 
of warm water, and mix it with the flour. Add warm 
water enough to make it pliable, and not too stiff; 
set in a warm place until it rises sufficiently, and bake 
as directed above. It takes several hours to rise. 

I am afraid I shall discount my credit on camp 
cooking when I admit that — if I must use fine flour 
— I prefer unleavened bread; what my friends ir- 
reverently call "club bread." Not that it was ever 



94 WOODCRAFT 



made or endorsed by any club of men that I know of, 
but because it is baked on a veritable club, of sassafras 
or black birch. This is how to make it: Cut a club 
two feet long and three inches thick at the broadest 
end; peel or shave off the bark smoothly, and sharpen 
the smaller end neatly. Then stick the sharpened 
end in the ground near the fire, leaning the broad 
end toward a bed of live coals, where it will get 
screeching hot. While it is heating, mix rather more 
than a half pint of best Minnesota flour with enough 
warm water to make a dough. Add a half teaspoon- 
ful of salt, and a teaspoonful of sugar, and mould 
and pull the dough until it becomes lively. Now, 
work it into a ribbon two inches wide and half an 
inch thick, wind the ribbon spirally around the broad 
end of the club, stick the latter in front of the fire so 
that the bread will bake evenly and quickly to a light 
brown, and turn frequently until done, which will be 
in about thirty minutes. When done take it from the 
fire, stand the club firmly upright, and pick the bread 
off in pieces as you want it to eat. It will keep hot 
a long time, and one soon becomes fond of it. 

To make perfect coffee, just two ingredients are 
necessary, and only two. These are water and coffee. 
It is owing to the bad management of the latter that 
we drink poor coffee. 

There are establishments all over the country that 
make a business of browning the berry, and sending 
it out in barrels to the retail grocer. It is all browned 
too lightly, and, kept loosely in barrels or boxes, it 
loses what little aroma it ever had, in a few days. We 
allow the grocer to run it on us, because it saves so 



COFFEE 95 



much bother, this having our coffee ready browned 
and ground to our hands. But it is not the way to 
have good coffee. This can only be had by using 
the fresh browned, fresh ground berry, and plenty of 
it; and it must not be of a light brown, as often 
recommended. To brown it rightly, put a pound of 
the green berry into a large spider over a hot fire, and 
stir it constantly until it turns very dark, with a 
greasy appearance on the surface of the berry. Put 
it in a tight can at once, if intended for home use, 
and grind as wanted. If intended for the woods, 
grind it while hot, and can it tightly. 

As for the best berry, Mocha is generally conceded 
first place, with Java a close second. It is the fashion 
at present to mix the two in proportions to suit, some 
taking two parts Java to one of Mocha, others re- 
versing these proportions. Either way is good, or 
the Mocha is quite as good alone. But there is a 
better berry than either for the genuine coffee toper. 
This is the small, dark green berry that comes to 
market under the generic name of Rio, that name 
covering half a dozen grades of coffee raised in dif- 
ferent provinces of Brazil, throughout a country ex- 
tending north and south for more than 1,200 miles. 
The berry alluded to is produced along the range of 
high hills to the westward of Bahia, and extending 
north toward the Parnahiba. It has never arrested at- 
tention as a distinct grade of the article, but it con- 
tains more coffee or caffein to the pound than any 
berry known to commerce. It is the smallest, heaviest 
and darkest green of any coffee that comes to our 
market from Brazil, and may be known by these 



96 WOODCRAFT 



traits. I have tested it in the land where it is grown, 
and also at home, for the past sixteen years, and I 
place it at the head of the list, with Mocha next. 
Either will make perfect coffee, if treated as follows: 
Of the berry, browned and ground, as before di- 
rected, take six heaping tablespoonfuls, and add 
three pints of cold water; place the kettle over the 
fire and bring to a sharp boil; set it a little aside 
where it will bubble and simmer until wanted, and 
just before pouring, drip in a half gill of cold water 
to settle it. That is all there is of it. The quantity 
of berry is about twice as much as usually given in 
recipes; but if you want coffee, you had better add 
two spoonfuls than cut off one. 

In 1867, and again in 1870, I had occasion to visit 
the West India Islands and Brazil. In common with 
most coffee topers, I had heard much of the super- 
excellence ascribed to "West India coffee" and "Bra- 
zilian coffee." I concluded to investigate. I had 
rooms at the Hotel d'Europe, Para, North Brazil. 
There were six of us, English and American board- 
ers. Every morning, before we were out of our 
hammocks, a barefooted, half naked Mina negress 
came around and served each of us with a small cup 
of strong, black coffee, and sugar ad libitum. There 
was not enough of it for a drink; it was rather in 
the nature of a medicine, and so intended — "To kill 
the biscos," they said. The coffee was above criti- 
cism. 

I went, in the dark of a tropical morning, with 
Senor Joao, to the coffee factory where they browned 
the berry, and saw him buy a pound, smoking hot, 



HOW TO MAKE IT 97 



for which he paid twenty-five cents, or quite as 
much as it would cost in New York. In ten minutes 
the coffee was at the hotel, and ground. This is the 
way they brewed it: A round-bottomed kettle was sit- 
ting on the brick range, with a half gallon of boiling 
water in it. Over the kettle a square piece of white 
flannel was suspended, caught up at the corners like 
a dip net. In this the coffee was placed, and a 
small darky put in his time steadily with a soup 
ladle, dipping the boiling water from the kettle and 
pouring it on the coffee. There was a constant 
stream percolating through coffee and cloth, which, 
in the course of half an hour, became almost black, 
and clear as brandy. This was "Brazilian coffee." 
As the cups used were very small, and as none but 
the Northerners drank more than one cup, I found 
that the hotel did not use over two quarts of coffee 
each morning. It struck me that a pound of fresh 
Rio coffee berry ought to make a half gallon of rather 
powerful coffee. 

On my arrival home — not having any small darky 
or any convenient arrangement for the dip net — I 
had a sack made of light, white flannel, holding 
about one pint. Into this I put one-quarter pound 
of freshly ground berry, with water enough for five 
large cups. It was boiled thoroughly, and proved 
just as good as the Brazilian article, but too strong 
for any of the family except the writer. Those who 
have a fancy for clear, strong "Brazilian coffee," will 
see how easily and simply it can be made. 

But, on a heavy knapsack-and-rifle tramp among 
the mountains, or a lone canoe cruise in a strange 



98 WOODCRAFT 



wilderness, I do not carry coffee. I prefer tea. 
Often, when too utterly tired and beaten for further 
travel, I have tried coffee, whisky or brandy, and a 
long experience convinces me that there is nothing 
so restful and refreshing to an exhausted man as a 
dish of strong, green tea. To make it as it should 
be made, bring the water to a high boil, and let it 
continue to boil for a full minute. Set it off the fire 
and it will cease boiling; put in a handful of tea, 
and it will instantly boil up again; then set it near 
the fire, where it will simmer for a few minutes, when 
it will be ready for use. Buy the best green tea you 
can find, and use it freely on a hard tramp. Black, 
or Oolong tea, is excellent in camp. It should be 
put in the pot with cold water and brought to the 
boiling point. 

Almost any man can cook potatoes, but few cook 
them well. Most people think them best boiled in 
their jackets, and to cook them perfectly in this 
manner is so simple and easy, that the wonder is 
how any one can fail. A kettle of screeching hot 
water with a small handful of salt in it, good pota- 
toes of nearly equal size, washed clean and clipped 
at the ends, these are the requisites. Put the pota- 
toes in the boiling water, cover closely, and keep 
the water at high boiling pitch until you can thrust 
a sharp sliver through the largest potato. Then 
drain off the water, and set the kettle in a hot place 
with the lid partly off. Take them out only as they 
are wanted; lukewarm potatoes are not good. They 
will be found about as good as potatoes can be, 
when cooked in their jackets. But there is a better 



POTATOES 99 



way, as thus: Select enough for a mess, of smooth, 
sound tubers; pare them carefully, taking off as little 
as possible, because the best of the potato lies near- 
est the skin, and cook as above. When done, pour 
the water off to the last drop; sprinkle a spoonful of 
salt and fine cracker crumbs over them; then shake, 
roll and rattle them in the kettle until the outsides 
are white and floury. Keep them piping hot until 
wanted. It is the way to have perfect boiled po- 
tatoes. 

Many outers are fond of roast potatoes in camp; 
and they mostly spoil them in the roasting, although 
there is no better place than the camp-fire in which 
to do it. To cook them aright, scoop out a basin- 
like depression under the fore-stick, three or four 
inches deep, and large enough to hold the tubers 
when laid side by side; fill it with bright, hard-wood 
coals, and keep up a strong heat for half an hour or 
more. Next, clean out the hollow, place the pota- 
toes in it, and cover them with hot sand or ashes, 
topped with a heap of glowing coals, and keep up all 
the heat you like. In about forty minutes com- 
mence to try them with a sharpened hard-wood 
sliver; when this will pass through them they are 
done, and should be raked out at once. Run the 
sliver through them from end to end, to let the steam 
escape, and use immediately, as a roast potato quickly 
becomes soggy and bitter. I will add that, in select- 
ing a supply of potatoes for camp, only the finest and 
smoothest should be taken. 

A man may be a trout-crank, he may have been 
looking forward for ten weary months to the time 



100 WOODCRAFT 



when he is to strike the much dreamed of mountain 
stream, where trout may be taken and eaten without 
stint. Occasionally — not often — his dream is realized. 
For two or three days he revels in fly-fishing, and eat- 
ing brook trout. Then his enthusiasm begins to sub- 
side. He talks less of his favorite flies, and hints 
that wading hour after hour in ice-water gives him 
cramps in the calves of his legs. Also, he finds that 
brook trout, eaten for days in succession, pall on the 
appetite. He hankers for the flesh-pots of the res- 
taurant, and his soul yearns for the bean-pot of home. 
Luckily, some one has brought a sack of white 
beans, and the expert — there is always an expert in 
camp — is deputed to cook them. He accepts the 
trust, and proceeds to do it. He puts a quart of 
dry beans and a liberal chunk of pork in a two- 
quart kettle, covers the mess with water, and brings 
it to a rapid boil. Presently the beans begin to swell 
and lift the lid of the kettle; their conduct is simply 
demoniacal. They lift up the lid of the kettle, 
they tumble out over the rim in a way to provoke a 
saint, and they have scarcely begun to cook. The 
expert is not to be beaten. As they rise, he spoons 
them out and throws them away, until half of the best 
beans being wasted, the rest settle to business. He 
fills the kettle with water and watches it for an hour. 
When bean-skins and scum arise he uses the spoon; 
and when a ring of greasy salt forms around the rim 
of the kettle, he carefully scrapes it off, but most of it 
drops back into the pot. When the beans seem 
cooked to the point of disintegration, he lifts off the 
kettle, and announces dinner. It is not a success. 



BEANS 101 



The larger beans are granulated rather than cooked, 
while the mealy portion of them has fallen to the 
bottom of the kettle, and become scorched thereon, 
and the smaller beans are too hard to be eatable. 
The liquid, that should be palatable bean soup, is 
greasy salt water, and the pork is half raw. The 
party falls back, hungry and disgusted. Even if the 
mess were well cooked, it is too salt for eating. And 
why should this be so? Why should any sensible 
man spend years in acquiring an education that shall 
fit him for the struggle of life, yet refuse to spend a 
single day in learning how to cook the food that must 
sustain the life ? It is one of the conundrums no one 
will ever find out. 

There is no article of food more easily carried, and 
none that contains more nourishment to the pound, 
than the bean. Limas are usually preferred, but the 
large white marrow is just as good. It will pay to 
select them carefully. Keep an eye on grocery 
stocks, and when you strike a lot of extra large, clean 
beans, buy twice as many as you need for camp use. 
Spread them on a table, a quart at a time, and you 
will be surprised to find how rapidly you can separate 
the largest and best from the others. Fully one-half 
will go to the side of the largest and finest, and these 
may be put in a muslin bag, and kept till wanted. 
Select the expeditionary pork with equal care, buy- 
ing nothing but thick, solid, "clear," with a pink 
tinge. Reject that which is white and lardy. With 
such material, if you cannot lay over Boston baked 
beans, you had better sweep the cook out of camp. 
This is how to cook them: Put a pound or a little 



102 WOODCRAFT 



more of clean pork in the kettle, with water enough to 
cover it. Let it boil slowly half an hour. In the 
mean time, wash and parboil one pint of beans. 
Drain the water from the pork and place the beans 
around it; add two quarts of water and hang the ket- 
tle where it will boil steadily, but not rapidly, for two 
hours. Pare neatly and thinly five or six medium 
sized potatoes, and allow them from thirty to forty 
minutes (according to size and variety), in which to 
cook. They must be pressed down among the beans 
so as to be entirely covered. If the beans be fresh 
and fine they will probably fall to pieces before time 
is up. This, if they are not allowed to scorch, makes 
them all the better. If a portion of pork be left 
over, it is excellent sliced very thin when cold, and 
eaten with bread. The above is a dinner for three 
or four hungry men. 

It is usually the case that some of the party prefer 
baked beans. To have these in perfection, add one 
gill of raw beans and a piece of pork three inches 
square to the foregoing proportions. Boil as above, 
until the beans begin to crack open; then fork out the 
smaller piece of pork, place it in the center of your 
largest cooking tin, take beans enough from the ket- 
tle to nearly fill the tin, set it over a bright fire on 
the range, invert the second sized tin for a cover, 
place live, hard-wood coals on top, and bake precisely 
as directed for bread — only, when the coals on top 
become dull and black, brush them off, raise the 
cover, and take a look. If the beans are getting too 
dry, add three or four spoonfuls of liquor from the 
kettle, replace cover and coals, and let them bake 



BAKED BEANS 103 



until they are of a rich light brown on top. Then 
serve. It is a good dish. If Boston can beat it, 
I don't want to lay up anything for old age. 

Brown bread and baked beans have a natural con' 
nection in the average American mind, and rightly. 
They supplement each other, even as spring lamb and 
green peas with our transatlantic cousins. But there 
is a better recipe for brown bread than is known to 
the dwellers of the Hub— one that has captured first 
prizes at country fairs, and won the approval of epi- 
cures from Maine to Minnesota; the one that brought 
honest old Greeley down, on his strictures anent 
"country bread." And here is the recipe; take it 
for what it is worth, and try it fairly before con- 
demning it. It is for home use: One quart of sweet 
milk, one quart of sour, two quarts of Indian meal 
and one quart of flour, and a cupful of dark, thin 
Porto Rico molasses. Use one teaspoonful of soda 
only. Bake in a steady, moderate oven, for four 
hours. Knead thoroughly before baking. 

Soup is, or should be, a leading food element in 
every woodland camp. I am sorry to say that noth- 
ing is, as a rule, more badly botched, while nothing 
is more easily or simply cooked as it should be. 
Soup requires time, and a solid basis of the right 
material. Venison is the basis, and the best material 
is the bloody part of the deer, where the bullet went 
through. We used to throw this away; we have 
learned better. Cut about four pounds of the bloody 
meat into convenient pieces, and wipe them as clean 
as possible with leaves or a damp cloth, but don't 
wash them. Put the meat into a five-quart kettle 



104 WOODCRAFT 



nearly filled with water, and raise it to a lively boil- 
ing pitch. Let it boil for two hours. Have ready a 
three-tined fork made from a branch of birch or 
beech, and with this test the meat from time to time; 
when it parts readily from the bones, slice in a large 
onion. Pare six large, smooth potatoes, cut five of 
them into quarters, and drop them into the kettle; 
scrape the sixth one into the soup for thickening. 
Season with salt and white pepper to taste. 

When, by skirmishing with the wooden fork, you can 
fish up bones with no meat on them, the soup is 
cooked, and the kettle may be set aside to cool. Any 
hungry sportsman can order the next motion. Squir- 
rels — red, black, gray or fox — make nearly as good 
a soup as venison, and a better stew. Hares, rab- 
bits, grouse, quail, or any of the smaller game birds, 
may be used in making soup; but all small game is 
better in a stew. 

To make a stew, proceed for the first two hours 
precisely as directed for soup; then slice in a couple 
of good-sized onions and six medium potatoes. Y/hen 
the meat begins to fall from the bones, make a 
thickening by rubbing three tablespoonfuls of flour 
and two spoonfuls of melted butter together; thin to 
the consistency of cream with liquor from the kettle, 
and drip slowly into . the stew, stirring briskly mean- 
while. Allow all soups and stews to boil two hours 
before seasoning, and use only the best table salt and 
white (or black) pepper. Season sparingly; it is 
easier to put salt in than to get it out. Cayenne pep- 
per adds zest to a soup or stew, but, as some dislike 
it, let each man season his plate to his own cheek. 



STEWS AND FRIES 105 

Fried squirrels are excellent for a change, but are 
mostly spoiled by poor cooks, who put tough old he's 
and tender young squirrels together, treating all alike. 
To dress and cook them properly, chop off heads, tails 
and feet with the hatchet; cut the skin on the back 
crosswise, and, inserting the two middle fingers, pull 
the skin off in two parts, (head and tail). Clean and 
cut them in halves, leaving two ribs on the hind- 
quarters. Put hind and fore quarters into the kettle, 
and parboil until tender. This will take about twenty 
minutes for young ones, and twice as long for the 
old. 

When a sharpened sliver will pass easily through 
the flesh, take the hindquarters from the kettle, drain, 
and place them in the frying-pan with pork fat hiss- 
ing hot. Fry to a light, rich brown. It is the only 
proper way to cook squirrels. The forequarters are 
to be left in the kettle for a stew. 

It sometimes happens that pigeons are very plenty, 
and the camp is tempted into over-shooting and over- 
cooking, until every one is thoroughly sick of pigeons. 
This is all wrong. No party is, or can be, justified 
in wanton slaughter, just because birds happen to be 
plenty; they will soon be scarce enough. Pigeons 
are hardly game, and they are not a first-class bird; 
but a good deal may be got out of them by the fol- 
lowing method: Dress them, at the rate of. two birds 
to one man; save the giblets; place in the kettle, and 
boil until the sliver will easily pierce the breast; fork 
them out, cut the thick meat from each side of the 
breast bone, roll slightly in flour, and put the pieces 
in the pan, frying them in the same way as directed 



106 WOODCRAFT 



for squirrels. Put the remainder of the birds in the 
kettle for a stew. 

Quail are good cooked in the same manner, but 
are better roasted or broiled. To roast them, par- 
boil for fifteen minutes, and in the meantime cut a 
thin hard-wood stick, eighteen inches long for each 
bird. Sharpen the sticks neatly at both ends; im- 
pale the birds on one end and thrust the sticks into 
the ground near the fire, leaning them so that the 
heat will strike strongly and evenly. Hang a strip of 
pork between the legs of each bird, and turn fre- 
quently until they are a rich brown. When the 
sharpened sliver will pass easily through the breast 
they are done. 

Woodcock are to be plucked, but not drawn. Sus- 
pend the bird in a bright, clear heat, hang a ribbon 
of fat pork between the legs, and roast until well 
done; do not parboil him. 

Ruffed grouse are excellent roasted in the same 
manner, but should first be parboiled. Mallards, teal, 
butterballs, all edible ducks, are to be treated the 
same as grouse. If you are ever lucky enough to 
feast on a canvas-back roasted as above, you will be 
apt to borrow a leaf from Oliver Twist. 

Venison steak should be pounded to tenderness, 
pressed and worked into shape with the hunting- 
knife, and broiled over a bed of clean hard-wood 
coals. A three-pronged birch fork makes the best 
broiler. For roast venison, the best portion is the 
forward part of the saddle. Trim off the f lanky parts 
and ends of the ribs; split the backbone lengthwise, 
that the inner surface may be well exposed; hang it 



BIRDS AND VENISON 107 

by a strong cord or bark string in a powerful, even 
heat; lay thin strips of pork along the upper edge, 
and turn from time to time until done. It had better 
be left a little rare than overdone. Next to the 
saddle for roasting, comes the shoulder. Peel this 
smoothly from the side, using the hunting knife; 
trim neatly, and cut off the leg at the knee; gash the 
thickest part of the flesh, and press shreds of pork 
into the gashes, with two or three thin slices skew- 
ered to the upper part. Treat it in the roasting as 
described above. It is not equal to the saddle when 
warm, but sliced and eaten cold, is quite as good. 

And do not despise the fretful porcupine; he is 
better than he looks. If you happen on a healthy 
young specimen when you are needing meat, give 
him a show before condemning him. Shoot him hu- 
manely in the head, and dress him. It is easily clone; 
there are no quills on the belly, and the skin peels 
as freely as a rabbit's. Take him to camp, parboil 
him for thirty minutes, and roast or broil him to a 
rich brown over a bed of glowing coals. He will 
need no pork to make him juicy, and you will find 
him very like spring lamb, only better. 

I do not accept the decision that ranks the little 
gray rabbit as a hare, simply because he has a slit in 
his lip; at all events I shall call him a rabbit for con- 
venience, to distinguish him from his long-legged 
cousin, who turns white in winter, never takes to a 
hole, and can keep ahead of hounds nearly all day, 
affording a game, musical chase that is seldom out 
of hearing. He never by any chance has an ounce 
of fat on him, and is not very good eating. He can, 



108 WOODCRAFT 



however, be worked into a good stew or a passable 
soup — provided he has not been feeding on laurel. 
The rabbit is an animal of different habits, and dif- 
ferent attributes. When jumped from his form, he is 
apt to "dig out" for a hole or the nearest stone heap. 
Sometimes an old one will potter around a thicket, 
ahead of a slow dog, but his tendency is always to 
hole. But he aifords some sport, and as an article of 
food, beats the long-legged hare out of sight. He is 
excellent in stews or soups, while the after half of 
him, flattened down with the hatchet, parboiled and 
fried brown in butter or pork fat, is equal to spring 
chicken. 

In cooking fish, as of flesh and fowl, the plainest 
and simplest methods are best; and for anything 
under two pounds, it is not necessary to go beyond 
the frying-pan. Trout of over a pound should be 
split down the back, that they may lie well in the pan, 
and cook evenly. Roll well in meal, or a mixture of 
meal and flour, and fry to a rich brown in pork fat, 
piping hot. Larger fish may just as well be fried, 
but are also adapted to other methods, and there are 
people who like fish broiled and buttered, or boiled. 
To broil a fish, split him on the back and broil him 
four minutes, flesh side down, turn and broil the 
other side an equal time. Butter and season to taste. 
To boil, the fish should weigh three pounds or more. 
Clean, and crimp him by gashing the sides deeply 
with a sharp knife. Put him in a kettle of boiling 
water strongly salted, and boil twenty-five minutes. 
For each additional pound above three, add five min- 
utes. For gravy, rub together two tablespoonfuls 



FISH 109 



of flour and one of melted butter, add one heaping 
teaspoonful of evaporated milk, and thin with liquor 
from the kettle. When done, it should have the con- 
sistency of cream. Take the fish from the kettle, 
drain, pour the gravy over it, and eat only with 
wheat bread or hard-tack, with butter. The simplest 
is best, healthiest, and most appetizing. 

As a rule, on a mountain tramp or a canoe cruise, 
I do not tote canned goods. I carry my duffle in a 
light, pliable knapsack, and there is an aggravating 
antagonism between the uncompromising rims of a 
fruit-can, and the knobs of my vertebrae, that twen- 
ty years of practice has utterly failed to reconcile. 
And yet, I have found my account in a can of con- 
densed milk, not for tea or coffee, but on bread as a 
substitute for butter. And I have found a small can 
of Boston baked beans a most helpful lunch, with 
a nine-mile carry ahead. It was not epicurean, but 
had staying qualities. 

I often have a call to pilot some muscular young 
friend into the deep forest, and he usually carries a 
large pack-basket, with a full supply of quart cans 
of salmon, tomatoes, peaches, etc. As in duty bound, 
I admonish him kindly, but firmly, on the folly of 
loading his young shoulders with such effeminate 
luxuries; often, I fear, hurting his young feelings by 
brusque advice. But at night, when the camp-fire 
burns brightly, and he begins to fish out his tins, the 
heart of the Old Woodsman relents, and I make 
amends by allowing him to divide the groceries. 

There is a method of cooking usually called "mud- 
ding up," which I have found to preserve the flavor 



110 WOODCRAFT 



and juiciness of ducks, grouse, etc., better than any 
other mode. I described the method in Forest and 
Stream more than a year ago, but a brief repetition 
may not be out of place here. Suppose the bird to 
be cooked is a mallard, or better still, a canvas-back. 
Cut off the head and most part of the neck; cut off 
the pinions and pull out the tail feathers, make a 
plastic cake of clay or tenacious earth an inch thick, 
and large enough to envelop the bird, and cover him 
with it snugly. Dig an oval pit under the fore-stick, 
large enough to hold him, and fill it with hot coals, 
keeping up a strong heat. Just before turning in for 
the night, clean out the pit, put in the bird, cover with 
hot embers and coals, keeping up a brisk fire over it 
all night. When taken out in the morning you will 
have an oval, oblong mass of baked clay, with a well 
roasted bird inside. Let the mass cool until it can be 
handled, break off the clay, and feathers and skin 
will come with it, leaving the bird clean and skinless. 
Season it as you eat, with salt, pepper, and a squeeze 
of lemon if you like, nothing else. 

In selecting salt, choose that which has a gritty 
feel when rubbed between the thumb and finger, and 
use white pepper rather than black, grinding the 
berry yourself. Procure a common tin pepper-box, 
and fill it with a mixture of fine salt and Cayenne pep- 
per — ten spoonfuls of the former ancj one of the lat- 
ter. Have it always where you can lay your hand on 
it; you will come to use it daily in camp, and if you 
ever get lost, you will find it of value. Fish and 
game have a flat, flashy taste eaten without salt, 
and are also unwholesome. 



CONDIMENTS HI 



Do not carry any of the one hundred and one con- 
diments, sauces, garnishes, etc., laid down in the 
books. Salt, pepper, and lemons fill the bill in that 
line. Lobster-sauce, shrimp-sauce, marjoram, celery, 
parsley, thyme, anchovies, etc., may be left at the 
hotels. 

It may be expected that a pocket volume on wood- 
craft should contain a liberal chapter of instruction 
on hunting. It would be quite useless. Hunters, like 
poets, are born, not made. The art cannot be taught 
on paper. A feAV simple hints, however, may not be 
misplaced. To start aright, have your clothes fitted 
for hunting. Select good cassimere of a sort of dull, 
no-colored, neutral tint, like a decayed stump, and 
have coat, pants, and cap made of it. For foot-gear, 
two pairs of heavy yarn socks, with rubber shoes or 
buckskin moccasins. In hunting, "silence is gold." Go 
quietly, slowly, and silently. Remember that the 
bright-eyed, sharp-eared wcod-folk can see, hear and 
smell, with a keenness that throws your dull faculties 
quite in the shade. As you go lumbering and stick- 
breaking through the woods, you will never know how 
many of these quietly leave your path to right and 
left, allowing you to pass, while they glide away, un- 
seen, unknown. It is easily seen that a sharp-sensed, 
light-bodied denizen of the woods can detect the ap- 
proach of a heavy, bifurcated, booted animal, a long 
way ahead, and avoid him accordingly. 

But there is an art, little known and practiced, that 
invariably succeeds in outflanking most wild animals; 
an art, simple in conception and execution, but re- 
quiring patience; a species, so to speak, of high art 



112 WOODCRAFT 



in forestry — the art of "sitting- on a log." 1 could 
enlarge on this. I might say that the only writer 
of any note who has mentioned this phase of wood- 
craft is Mr. Charles D. Warner; and he only speaks 
of it in painting the character of that lazy old guide, 
"Old Phelps." 

Sitting on a log includes a deal of patience, with 
oftentimes cold feet and chattering teeth; but, at- 
tended to faithfully and patiently, is quite as success- 
ful as chasing a deer all day on tracking snow, while 
it can be practiced when the leaves are dry, and no 
other mode of still-hunting offers the ghost of a 
chance, "When a man is moving through the woods, 
wary, watchful animals are pretty certain to catch 
sight of him. But let him keep perfectly quiet and 
the conditions are reversed. I have had my best 
luck, and killed my best deer, by patiently waiting 
hour after hour on runways. But the time when a 
hunter could get four or five fair shots in a day by 
watching a runway has passed away forever. Never 
any more will buffalo be seen in solid masses cover- 
ing square miles in one pack. The immense bands 
of elk and droves of deer are things of the past, and 
"The game must go." 




CHAPTER VIII. 

A TEN DAYS' TRIP IN THE WILDERNESS. — GOING IT ALONE. 

jBOUT the only inducements I can think 
of for making a ten days' journey 
through a strange wilderness, solitary 
and alone, were a liking for adventure, 
intense love of nature in her wildest 
dress, and a strange fondness for be- 
ing in deep forests by myself. The 
choice of route was determined by the 
fact that two old friends and school- 
mates had chosen to cast their lots in 
Michigan, one near Saginaw Bay, the other among the 
pines of the Muskegon. And both were a little home- 
sick, and both wrote frequent letters, in which, know- 
ing my weak point, they exhausted their adjectives 
and adverbs in describing the abundance of game 
and the marvelous fishing. Now, the Muskegon friend 
— Davis — was pretty well out of reach. But Pete Wil- 
liams, only a few miles out of Saginaw, was easily 
accessible. And so it happened, on a bright October 
morning, when there came a frost that cut from 
Maine to Missouri, that a sudden fancy took me to 
use my new Billinghurst on something larger than 
squirrels. It took about one minute to decide, and 



114 WOODCRAFT 



an hour to pack such duffle as I needed for a few 
weeks in the woods. 

Remembering Pete's two brown-eyed "kids," and 
knowing that they were ague-stricken and homesick, 
I made place for a few apples and peaches, with a 
ripe melon. For Pete and I had been chums in 
Rochester, and I had bunked in his attic on Galusha 
Street, for two years. Also, his babies thought as 
much of me as of their father. The trip to Saginaw 
was easy and pleasant. A "Redbird" packet to Buf- 
falo, the old propeller Globe to Lower Saginaw, and 
a ride of half a day on a buckboard, brought me to 
Pete Williams' clearing. Were they glad to see me? 
Well, I think so. Pete and his wife cried like chil- 
dren, while the two little homesick "kids" laid their 
silken heads on my knees and sobbed for very joy. 
When I brought out the apples and peaches, assuring 
them that these came from the little garden of their 
old home — liar that I was — their delight was bound- 
less. And the fact that their favorite tree was a 
"sour bough," while these were sweet, did not shake 
their faith in the least. 

I staid ten days or more with the Williams family, 
and the fishing and hunting were all that he had said 
— all that could be asked. The woods swarmed with 
pigeons and squirrels; grouse, quail, ducks and wild 
turkeys were too plenty, while a good hunter could 
scarcely fail of getting a standing shot at a deer in a 
morning's hunt. But, cui bono? What use could be 
made of fish or game in such a place? They were 
all half sick, and had little appetite. Mrs. Williams 
could not endure the smell of fish; they had been 



AT PETE WILLIAMS'S 115 

cloyed on small game, and were surfeited on venison. 

My sporting ardor sank to zero. I had the de- 
cency not to slaughter game for the love of killing, 
and leave it to rot, or hook large fish that could not 
be used. I soon grew restless, and began to think 
often about the lumber camp on the Muskegon. By 
surveyor's lines it was hardly more than sixty miles 
from Pete Williams' clearing to the Joe Davis camp 
on the Muskegon. "But practically," said Pete, "Joe 
and I are a thousand miles apart. White men, as a 
rule, don't undertake to cross this wilderness. The 
only one I know who has tried it is old Bill Hance; 
he can tell you all about it." 

Hance was the hunting and trapping genius of 
Saginaw Bay — a man who dwelt in the woods sum- 
mer and winter, and never trimmed his hair or wore 
any other covering on his head. Not a misanthrope, 
or taciturn, but friendly and talkative rather; liking 
best to live alone, but fond of tramping across the 
woods to gossip with neighbors; a very tall man 
withal, and so thin that, as he went rapidly winding 
and turning among fallen logs, you looked to see 
him tangle up and tumble in a loose coil, like a wet 
rope, but he was better than he looked. He had a high 
reputation as trailer, guide, or trapper, and was men- 
tioned as a "bad man in a racket." I had met him 
several times, and as he was decidedly a character, 
had rather laid myself out to cultivate him. And 
now that I began to have a strong notion of crossing 
the woods alone, I took counsel of Bill Hance. Un- 
like Williams, he thought it perfectly feasible, and 
rather a neat, gamy thing for a youngster to do. He 



116 WOODCRAFT 



had crossed the woods several times with surveying 
parties, and once alone. He knew an Indian trail 
which led to an old camp within ten miles of the 
Muskegon, and thought the trail could be followed. It 
took him a little less than three days to go through; 
"but," he added, "I nat'rally travel a little faster in 
the woods than most men. If you can follow the 
trail, you ought to get through in a little more'n 
three days — if you keep mogginV 

One afternoon I carefully packed the knapsack and 
organized for a long woods tramp. I took little 
stock in that trail, or the three days' notion as to 
time. I made calculations on losing the trail the 
first day, and being out a full week. The outfit con- 
sisted of rifle, hatchet, compass, blanket-bag, knap- 
sack and knife. For rations, one loaf of bread, two 
quarts of meal, two pounds of pork, one pound of 
sugar, with tea, salt, etc., and a supply of jerked 
venison. One tin dish, twelve rounds of ammuni- 
tion, and the bullet-molds, filled the list, and did not 
make a heavy load. 

Early on a crisp, bright October morning I kissed 
the little fellows good-bye, and started out with 
Hance, who was to put me on the trail. I left the 
children with sorrow and pity at heart. I am glad 
now that my visit was a golden hiatus in the sick 
monotony of their young lives, and that I was able 
to brighten a few days of their dreary existence. 
They had begged for the privilege of sleeping with 
me on a shake-down from the first; and when, as 
often happened, a pair . of little feverish lips would 
murmur timidly and pleadingly, "I'm so dry; can I 



THE START 117 



have er drink ? " I am thankful that I did not put the 
pleader off with a sip of tepid water, but always 
brought it from the spring, sparkling and cold. For, a 
twelvemonth later, there were two little graves in a 
corner of the stump-blackened garden, and two sore 
hearts in Pete Williams' cabin. 

Hance found the trail easily, but the Indians had 
been gone a long time, and it was filled with leaves, 
dim, and not easy to follow. It ended as nearly all 
trails do; it branched off to right and left, grew 
dimmer and slimmer, degenerated to a deer path, 
petered out to a squirrel track, ran up a tree, and 
ended in a knot hole. I was not sorry. It left me 
free to follow my nose, my inclination, and — the 
compass. 

There are men who, on finding themselves alone 
in a pathless forest, become appalled, almost panic 
stricken. The vastness of an unbroken wilderness 
subdues them, and they quail before the relentless, 
untamed forces of nature. These are the men who 
grow enthusiastic — at home — about sylvan life, out- 
door sports, but always strike camp and come home 
rather sooner than they intended. And there be 
some who plunge into an unbroken forest with a feel- 
ing of fresh, free, invigorating delight, as they might 
dash into a crisp ocean surf on a hot day. These 
know that nature is stern, hard, immovable and ter- 
rible in unrelenting cruelty. When wintry winds are 
out and the mercury far below zero, she will allow 
her most ardent lover to freeze on her snowy breast 
without waving a leaf in pity, or offering him a match ; 
and scores of her devotees may starve to death in as 



118 WOODCRAFT 



many different languages before she will offer a loaf 
of bread. She does not deal in matches and loaves; 
rather in thunderbolts and granite mountains. And 
the ashes of her camp-fires bury proud cities. But, 
like all tyrants, she yields to force, and gives the 
more, the more she is beaten. She may starve or 
freeze the poet, the scholar, the scientist; all the 
same, she has in store food, fuel and shelter, which 
the skillful, self-reliant woodsman can wring from her 
savage hand with axe and rifle. 

Only to him whose coat of rags 

Has pressed at night her regal feet, 
Shall come the secrets, strange and sweet, 

Of century pines and beetling crags. 

For him the goddess shall unlock 
The golden secrets which have lain 
Ten thousand years, through frost and rain, 

Deep in the bosom of the rock. 

The trip was a long and tiresome one, considering 
the distance. There were no hairbreadth escapes; I 
was not tackled by bears, treed by wolves, or nearly 
killed by a hand-to-claw "racket" with a panther; 
and there were no Indians to come sneak-hunting 
around after hair. Animal life was abundant, exu- 
berant, even. But the bright-eyed woodfolk seemed 
tame, nay, almost friendly, and quite intent on mind- 
ing their own business. It was a "pigeon year," a 
"squirrel year," and also a marvelous year for shack, 
or mast. Every nut-bearing tree was loaded with 



WOOD LIFE 119 



sweet well-filled nuts; and this, coupled with the 
fact that the Indians had left, and the whites had not 
yet got in, probably accounted for the plenitude of 
game. 

I do not think there was an hour of daylight on 
the trip when squirrels were not too numerous to be 
counted, while pigeons were a constant quantity from 
start to finish. Grouse in the thickets, and quail in 
the high oak openings, or small prairies, with droves 
of wild turkeys among heavy timber, were met with 
almost hourly, and there was scarcely a day on which 
I could not have had a standing shot at a bear. But 
the most interesting point about the game was — to 
me, at least — the marvelous abundance of deer. They 
were everywhere, on all sorts of ground and among 
all varieties of timber; very tame they were, too, 
often stopping to look at the stranger, offering easy 
shots at short range, and finally going off quite 
leisurely. 

No ardent lover of forest life could be lonely in 
such company, and in such weather. The only draw- 
back was the harassing and vexatious manner in which 
lakes, streams, swamps and marshes constantly per- 
sisted in getting across the way, compelling long de- 
tours to the north or south, when the true course 
was nearly due west. I think there were days on 
which ten hours of pretty faithful tramping did not 
result in more than three or four miles of direct 
headway. The headwaters of the Salt and Chippewa 
rivers were especially obstructive; and, when more 
than half the distance was covered, I ran into a tangle 
of small lakes, marshes and swamps, not marked on 



120 WOODCRAFT 



the map, which cost a hard day's work to leave 
behind. 

While there were no startling adventures, and no 
danger connected with the trip, there was a constant 
succession of incidents, that made the lonely tramp 
far from monotonous. Some of these occurrences 
were intensely interesting, and a little exciting. Per- 
haps the brief recital of a few may not be uninterest- 
ing at the present day, when game is so rapidly dis- 
appearing. 

My rifle was a neat, hair-triggered Billinghurst, 
carrying sixty round balls to the pound, a muzzle- 
loader, of course, and a nail-driver. I made just 
three shots in ten days, and each shot stood for a 
plump young deer in the "short blue." It seemed 
wicked to murder such a bright, graceful animal, 
when no more than the loins and a couple of slices 
from the ham could be used, leaving the balance to 
the wolves, who never failed to take possession before 
I was out of ear shot. But I condoned the excess, if 
excess it were, by the many chances I allowed to pass, 
not only on deer but bear, and once on a big brute of a 
wild hog, the wickedest and most formidable looking 
animal I ever met in the woods. The meeting hap- 
pened in this wise. I had been bothered and wearied 
for half a day by a bad piece of low, marshy ground, 
and had at length struck a dry, rolling oak opening, 
where I sat down at the root of a small oak to rest. 
I had scarcely been resting ten minutes, when I 
caught sight of a large, dirty-white animal, slowly 
working its way in my direction through the low 
bushes, evidently nosing around for acorns. I was 



INCIDENTS 121 



puzzled to say what it was. It looked like a hog, but 
stood too high on its legs; and how would such a beast 
get there anyhow? Nearer and nearer he came, and 
at last walked out into an open spot less than twenty 
yards distant. It was a wild hog of the ugliest and 
largest description; tall as a yearling, with an un- 
naturally large head, and dangerous looking tusks, 
that curved above his savage snout like small horns. 
There was promise of magnificent power in his im- 
mense shoulders, while flanks and hams were dispro- 
portionately light. He came out to the open leisurely 
munching his acorns, or amusing himself by plough- 
ing deep furrows with his nose, and not until within 
ten yards did he appear to note the presence of a 
stranger. Suddenly he raised his head and became 
rigid as though frozen to stone; he was taking an 
observation. For a few seconds he remained im- 
movable, then his bristles became erect, and with a 
deep, guttural, grunting noise, he commenced hitch- 
ing himself along in my direction, sidewise. My hair 
raised, and in an instant I was on my feet with 
the cocked rifle to my shoulder — meaning to shoot 
before his charge, and then make good time up the 
tree. But there was no need. As I sprang to my 
feet he sprang for the hazel bushes, and went tearing 
through them with the speed of a deer, keeping up a 
succession of snorts and grunts that could be heard 
long after he had passed out of sight. I am not sub- 
ject to buck fever, and was disgusted to find myself 
so badly "rattled" that I could scarcely handle the 
rifle. At first I was provoked at myself for not get- 
ting a good ready and shooting him in the head, as 



122 WOODCRAFT 



he came out of the bushes; but it was better to let 
him live. He was not carnivorous, or a beast of 
prey, and ugly as he was, certainly looked better 
alive than he would as a porcine corpse. No doubt 
he relished his acorns as well as though he had been 
less ugly, and he was a savage power in the forest. 
Bears love pork, even as a darky loves 'possum; and 
the fact that he was picking up a comfortable liv- 
ing in that wilderness, is presumptive evidence that he 
was a match for the largest bear, or he would have 
been eaten long before. 

Another little incident, in which Bruin played a 
leading part, rises vividly to memory. It was hardly 
an adventure; only the meeting of man and bear, 
and they parted on good terms, with no hardness on 
either side. 

The meeting occurred, as usually was the case 
with large game, on dry, oak lands, where the under- 
growth was hazel, sassafras, and wild grapevine. As 
before, I had paused for a rest, when I began to catch 
glimpses of a very black animal working its way 
among the hazel bushes, under the scattering oaks, 
and toward me. With no definite intention of shoot- 
ing, but just to see how easy it might be to kill him,, 
I got a good ready, and waited. Slowly and lazily 
he nuzzled his way among the trees, sitting up occa- 
sionally to crunch acorns, until he was within twenty- 
five yards of me, with the bright bead neatly show- 
ing at the butt of his ear, and he sitting on his 
haunches, calmly chewing his acorns, oblivious of 
danger. He was the shortest-legged, blackest, and 
glossiest bear I had ever seen; and such a fair shot. 



MEETING A BEAR 123 

But I could not use either skin or meat, and he was 
a splendid picture just as he sat. Shot down and left 
to taint the blessed air, he would not look as whole- 
some, let alone that it would be unwarrantable 
murder. And so, when he came nosing under the 
very tree where I was sitting, I suddenly jumped 
up, threw my hat at him, and gave a Comanche yell. 
He tumbled over in a limp heap, grunting and whin- 
ing for very terror, gathered himself up, got up head- 
way, and disappeared with wonderful speed — consid- 
ering the length of his legs. 

On another occasion — and this was in heavy tim- 
ber — I was resting on a log, partially concealed by 
spice bushes, when I noticed a large flock of turkeys 
coming in my direction. As they rapidly advanced 
with their quick, gliding walk, the flock grew to a 
drove, the drove became a swarm — an army. To 
right and on the left, as far as I could see in front, a 
legion of turkeys were marching, steadily marching 
to the eastward. Among them were some of the 
grandest gobblers I had ever seen, and one magnifi- 
cent fellow came straight toward me. Never before 
or since have I seen such a splendid wild bird. His 
thick, glossy black beard nearly reached the ground, 
his bronze uniform was of the richest, and he was de- 
cidedly the largest I have ever seen. When within 
fifty feet of the spot where I was nearly hidden, his 
wary eye caught something suspicious; and he raised 
his superb head for an instant in an attitude of mo- 
tionless attention. Then, with lowered head and 
drooping tail, he turned right about, gave the note of 
alarm, put the trunk of a large tree quickly between 



124 WOODCRAFT 



himself and the enemy, and went away like the wind. 
With the speed of thought the warning note was 
sounded along the whole line, and in a moment the 
woods seemed alive with turkeys, running for dear 
life. In less time than it takes to tell it, that galli- 
naceous army had passed out of sight, forever. And 
the like of it will never again be possible on this 
continent. 

And again, on the morning of the sixth day out, I 
blundered on to such an aggregation of deer as a 
man sees but once in a lifetime. I had camped over 
night on low land, among heavy timber, but soon 
after striking camp, came to a place where the timber 
was scattering, and the land had a gentle rise to the 
westward. Scarcely had I left the low land behind, 
when a few deer got out of their beds and commenced 
lazily bounding away. They were soon joined by 
others; on the right flank, on the left, and ahead, 
they continued to rise and canter off leisurely, stop- 
ping at a distance of one or two hundred yards to 
look back. It struck me finally that I had started 
something rather unusual, and I began counting the 
deer in sight. It was useless to attempt it; their 
white flags were flying in front and on both flanks, as 
far as one could see, and new ones seemed constantly 
joining the procession. Among them were several 
very large bucks with superb antlers, and these 
seemed very little afraid of the small, quiet biped in 
leaf-colored rig. They often paused to gaze back 
with bold, fearless front, as though inclined to call a 
halt and face the music; but when within a hundred 
yards, would turn and canter leisurely away. As the 



TURKEYS AND DEER 125 

herd neared the summit of the low-lying ridge, I 
tried to make a reasonable guess at their numbers, 
by counting a part and estimating the rest, but could 
come to no satisfactory conclusion. As they passed 
the summit and loped down the gentle decline toward 
heavy timber, they began to scatter, and soon not a 
flag was in sight. It was a magnificent cervine army 
with white banners, and I shall never look upon its 
like again. The largest drove of deer I have seen in 
twenty years consisted of seven only. 

And with much of interest, much of tramping, and 
not a little vexatious delay, I came at length to 
a stream that I knew must be the south branch of 
the Muskegon. The main river could scarcely be 
more than ten miles to the westward, and might be 
easily reached in one day. 

It was time. The meal and pork were nearly gone, 
sugar and tea were at low ebb, and I was tired of 
venison; tired anyhow; ready for human speech and 
human companionship. 

It was in the afternoon of the ninth day that I 
crossed the South Muskegon and laid a course west 
by north. The travelling was not bad; and in less 
than an hour I ran on to the ruins of a camp that I 
knew to be the work of Indians. It had evidently 
been a permanent winter camp, and was almost cer- 
tainly the Indian camp spoken of by Bill Hance. 
Pausing a short time to look over the ruins, with 
the lonely feeling always induced by a decayed, rot- 
ting camp, I struck due west and made several miles 
before sundown. 

I camped on a little rill, near a huge dry stub that 



126 WOODCRAFT 



would peel, made the last of the meal into a johnny- 
cake, broiled the last slice of pork, and laid down 
with the notion that a ten days' tramp, where it took 
an average of fifteen miles to make six, ought to end 
on the morrow. At sunrise I was again on foot, 
and after three hours of steady tramping, saw a 
smoky opening ahead. In five minutes I was stand- 
ing on the left bank of the Muskegon. 

And the Joe Davis camp — was it up stream or 
down? I decided on the latter, and started slowly 
down stream, keeping an eye out for signs. In less 
than an hour I struck a dim log road which led to 
the river, and there was a "landing," with the usual 
debris of skids, loose bark, chocks, and some pieces 
of broken boards. It did not take long to construct 
an efficient log raft from the dry skids, and as I 
drifted placidly down the deep, wild river, munching 
the last bit of johnny-cake, I inwardly swore that my 
next wilderness cruise should be by water. 

It was in late afternoon that I heard — blessed 
sound — the eager clank, clank, clank of the old- 
fashioned sawmill. It grew nearer and more dis- 
tinct; presently I could distinguish the rumble of 
machinery as the carriage gigged back; then the 
raft rounded a gentle bend, and a mill, with its long, 
log boarding-house, came full in sight. 

As the raft swung into the landing the mill became 
silent; a brown-bearded, red-shirted fellow came 
down to welcome me, a pair of strong hands grasped 
both my own, and the voice of Joe Davis said ear- 
nestly, "Why, George! I never was so d — d glad to 
see a man in my life!" 



AT THE RIVER 127 

Tha ten days' tramp was ended. It had been 
wearisome to a degree, but interesting and instruct- 
ive. I had seen more game birds and animals in 
the time than I ever saw before or since in a whole 
season; and, though I came out with clothes pretty 
well worn and torn off my back and legs, was a little 
disposed to plume myself on the achievement. Even 
at this day I am a little proud of the fact that, with 
so many temptations to slaughter, I only fired three 
shots on the route. Nothing but the exceptionally 
fine, dry weather rendered such a trip possible in a 
wilderness so cut up with swamps, lakes, marshes and 
streams. A week of steady rain or a premature 
snow storm — either likely enough at that season- 
would have been most disastrous; while a forest fire 
like that of '56, and later ones, would simply have 
proved fatal. 

Reader, if ever you are tempted to make a similar 
thoughtless, reckless trip — don't do it. 



CHAPTER IX.— CANOEING. 



THE LIGHT CANOE AND DOUBLE BLADE. — VARIOUS CANOES FOR 

VARIOUS CANOEISTS. — REASONS FOR PREFERRING THE 

CLINKER-BUILT CEDAR. 

;HE canoe is coming to the front, and 
canoeing is gaining rapidly in popular 
favor, in spite of the disparaging re- 
mark that "a canoe is the poor man's 
yacht." The canoe editor of Forest 
and Stream pertinently says, "we may 
as properly call a bicycle 'the poor 
man's express train.' " But, suppose 
it is the poor man's yacht? Are we 
to be debarred from aquatic sports be- 
cause we are not rich ? And are we such weak flunkies 
as to be ashamed of poverty? Or to attempt shams 
and subterfuges to hide it? For myself, I freely 
accept the imputation. In common with nine-tenths 
of my fellow citizens I am poor — and the canoe is 
my yacht, as it would be were I a millionaire. We 
are a nation of many millions, and comparatively few 
of us are rich enough to support a yacht, let alone 
the fact that not one man in fifty lives near enough 
to yachting waters to make such an acquisition de- 
sirable — or feasible, even. It is different with the 




A CANOE CRUISE 129 



canoe. A man like myself may live in the back- 
woods, a hundred miles from a decent sized inland 
lake, and much further from the sea coast, and yet 
be an enthusiastic canoeist. For instance. 

Last July I made my preparations for a canoe 
cruise, and spun out with as little delay as possible. 
I had pitched on the Adirondacks as cruising- 
ground, and had more than 250 miles of railroads 
and buckboards to take, before launching the canoe 
on Moose River. She was carried thirteen miles 
over the Brown's Tract road on the head of her 
skipper, cruised from the western side of the Wilder- 
ness to the Lower St. Regis on the east side, cruised 
back again by a somewhat different route, was taken 
home to Pennsylvania on the cars, 250 miles, sent 
back to her builder, St. Lawrence county, N. Y., over 
300 miles, thence by rail to New York City, where, 
the last I heard of her, she was on exhibition at the 
Forest and Stream office. She took her chances in 
the baggage car, with no special care, and is to-day, 
so far as I know, staunch and tight, with not a check 
in her frail siding. 

Such cruising can only be made in a very light 
canoe, and with a very light outfit. It was sometimes 
necessary to make several carries in one day, aggre- 
gating as much as ten miles, besides from fifteen tc 
twenty miles under paddle. No heavy, decked, pad- 
dling or sailing canoe would have been available for 
such a trip with a man of ordinary muscle. 

The difference between a lone, independent cruise 
through an almost unbroken wilderness, and cruising 
along civilized routes, where the canoeist can interview 



130 WOODCRAFT 



farm houses and village groceries for supplies, get- 
ting gratuitous stonings from the small boy, and much 
reviling from ye ancient mariner of the towpath — I 
say, the difference is just immense. Whence it comes 
that I always prefer a very light, open canoe; one 
that can carry almost as easily as my hat, and yet 
that will float me easily, buoyantly, and safely. And 
such a canoe was my last cruiser. She only weighed 
ten and one-half pounds when first launched, and 
after an all-summer rattling by land and water had 
only gained half a pound. I do not therefore advise 
any one to buy a ten and a half pound canoe; al- 
though she would prove competent for a skillful light- 
weight. She was built to order, as a test of light- 
ness, and was the third experiment in that line. 

I have nothing to say against the really fine canoes 
that are in highest favor today. Were I fond of 
sailing, and satisfied to cruise on routes where clear- 
ings are more plenty than carries, I dare say I should 
run a Shadow, or Stella Maris, at a cost of consid- 
erably more than $100 — though I should hardly call 
it a "poor man's yacht." 

Much is being said and written at the present day 
as to the "perfect canoe." One writer decides in 
favor of a Pearl 15x31% inches. In the same column 
another says, "the perfect canoe does not exist." I 
should rather say there are several types of the mod- 
ern canoe, each nearly perfect in its way and for the 
use to which it is best adapted. The perfect pad- 
dling canoe is by no means perfect under canvas, and 
vice versa. The best cruiser is not a perfect racer, 
while neither of them is at all perfect as a paddling 



A LIGHT CANOE 131 

cruiser where much carrying is to be done. And the 
most perfect canoe for fishing and gunning around 
shallow, marshy waters, would be a very imperfect 
canoe for a rough and ready cruise of one hundred 
miles through a strange wilderness, where a day's 
cruise will sometimes include a dozen miles of carry- 
ing. 

Believing, as I do, that the light, single canoe with 
double-bladed paddle is bound to soon become a 
leading — if not the leading — feature in summer 
recreation, and having been a light canoeist for 
nearly fifty years, during the last twenty of which I 
experimented much with the view of reducing weight, 
perhaps I can give some hints that may help a 
younger man in the selection of a canoe which shall 
be safe, pleasant to ride, and not burdensome to 
carry. 

Let me premise that, up to four years ago, I was 
never able to get a canoe that entirely satisfied me 
as to weight and model. I bought the smallest 
birches I could find; procured a tiny Chippewa dug- 
out from North Michigan, and once owned a kyak. 
They were all too heavjr, and they were cranky to a 
degree. 

About twenty years ago I commenced making my 
own canoes. The construction was of the simplest; 
a 22-inch pine board for the bottom, planed to % 
of an inch thickness; two wide ^-inch boards for 
the sides, and two light oak stems; five pieces of 
wood in all. I found that the bend of the siding 
gave too much shear; for instance, if the siding was 
12 inches wide, she would have a rise of 12 inches 



132 WOODCRAFT 



at stems and less than 5 inches at center. But the 
flat bottom made her very stiff, and for river work 
she was better than anything I had yet tried. She 
was too heavy, however, always weighing from 45 to 
50 pounds, and awkward to carry. 

My last canoe of this style went down the Susque- 
hanna with an ice jam in the spring of '79, and in the 
meantime canoeing began to loom up. The best 
paper in the country which makes out-door sport a 
specialty, devoted liberal space to canoeing, and 
skilled boatbuilders were advertising canoes of vari- 
ous models and widely different material. I com- 
menced interviewing the builders by letter, and 
studying catalogues carefully. There was a wide 
margin of choice. You could have lap streak, smooth 
skin, paper, veneer, or canvas. What I wanted was 
light weight, and good model. I liked the Peterboro 
canoes; they were decidedly canoey. Also, the 
veneered Racines; but neither of them talked of a 
20-pound canoe. The "Osgood folding canvas" did. 
But I had some knowledge of canvas boats. I knew 
they could make her down to 20 pounds. How 
much would she weigh after being in the water a 
week, and how would she behave when swamped in 
the middle of a lake, were questions to be asked, for 
I always get swamped. One builder of cedar canoes 
thought he could make me the boat I wanted, inside 
of 20 pounds, clinker-built, and at my own risk, as 
he hardly believed in so light a boat. I sent him 
the order, and he turned out what is pretty well 
known in Brown's Tract as the "Nessmuk canoe." 
She weighed just 17 pounds 13% ounces, and was 



EXPERIMENTS 133 



thought to be the lightest working canoe in existence. 
Her builder gave me some advice about stiffening 
her with braces, etc., if I found her too frail, "and 
he never expected to build another like her." 

"He builded better than he knew." She needed 
no bracing; and she was, and is, a staunch, sea- 
worthy little model. I fell in love with her from the 
start. I had at last found the canoe that I could 
ride in rough water, sleep in afloat, and carry with 
ease for miles. I paddled her early and late, mainly 
on the Fulton Chain; but I also cruised her on 
Raquette Lake, Eagle, Utowana, Blue Mountain, 
and Forked lakes. I paddled her until there were 
black and blue streaks along the muscles from wrist 
to elbow. Thank Heaven, I had found something 
that made me a boy again. Her log shows a cruise 
for 18S0 of over 550 miles. 

As regards her capacity (she is now on Third 
Lake, Brown's Tract), James P. Fifield, a muscular 
young Forge House guide of 6 feet 2 inches and 185 
pounds weight, took her through the Fulton Chain 
to Raquette Lake last summer; and, happening on 
his camp, Seventh Lake, last July, I asked him how 
she performed under his weight. He said, "I never 
made the trip to Raquette so lightly and easily 
in my life." And as to the opinion of her builder, he 
wrote me, under date of Nov. 18, '83: "I thought when 
I built the Nessmuk, no one else would ever want one. 
But I now build about a dozen of them a year. 
Great big men, ladies, and two, aye, three schoolboys 
ride in them. It is wonderful how few pounds of 
cedar, rightly modeled and properly put together, it 



134 WOODCRAFT 



takes to float a man." Just so, Mr. Builder. That's 
what I said when I ordered her. But few seemed to 
see it then. 

The Nessmuk was by no means the ultimatum of 
lightness, and I ordered another, six inches longer, 
two inches wider, and to weigh about 15 pounds. 
When she came to hand she was a beauty, finished in 
oil and shellac. But she weighed 16 pounds, and 
would not only carry me and my duffle, but I could 
easily carry a passenger of my weight. I cruised 
her in the summer of '81 over the Fulton Chain, 
Raquette Lake, Forked Lake, down the Raquette 
River, and on Long Lake. But her log only showed 
a record of 206 miles. The cruise that had been 
mapped for 600 miles was cut short by sickness, and 
I went into quarantine at the hostelry of Mitchell 
Sabattis. Slowly and feebly I crept back to the Ful- 
ton Chain, hung up at the Forge House, and the 
cruise of the Susan Nipper was ended. Later in the 
season, I sent for her, and she was forwarded by ex- 
press, coming out over the fearful Brown's Tract 
road to Boonville (25% miles) by buckboard. From 
Boonville home, she took her chances in the baggage 
car without protection, and reached her destination 
without a check or scratch. She hangs in her slings 
under the porch, a thing of beauty — and, like many 
beauties, a trifle frail — but staunch as the day I took 
her. Her proper lading is about 200 pounds. She 
can float 300 pounds. 

Of my last and lightest venture, the Sairy Gamp, 
little more need be said. I will only add that a Mr. 
Dutton, of Philadelphia, got into her at the Forge 



WHAT SHE CAN DO 135 

House, and paddled her like an old canoeist, though 
it was his first experience with the double blade. He 
gave his age as sixty-four years, and weight, 140 
pounds. Billy Cornell, a bright young guide, cruised 
her on Raquette Lake quite as well as her owner 
could do it, and I thought she trimmed better with 
him. He paddled at 141% pounds, which is just 
about her right lading. And she was only an ex- 
periment, anyhow. I wanted to find out how light 
a canoe it took to drown her skipper, and I do not yet 
know. I never shall. But, most of all, I desired to 
settle the question — approximately at least — of weight, 
as regards canoe and canoeist. 

Many years ago, I became convinced that we were 
all, as canoeists, carrying and paddling just twice as 
much wood as was at all needful, and something 
more than a year since, I advanced the opinion in 
Forest and Stream, that ten pounds of well made 
cedar ought to carry one hundred pounds of man. 
The past season has more than proved it; but, as I 
may be a little exceptional, I leave myself out of the 
question, and have ordered my next canoe on lines 
and dimensions that, in my judgment, will be found 
nearly perfect for the average canoeist of 150 to 
160 pounds. She will be much stronger than either 
of my other canoes, because few men would like a 
canoe so frail and limber that she can be sprung in- 
ward by hand pressure on the gunwales, as easily as a 
hat-box. And many men are clumsy or careless with 
a boat, while others are lubberly by nature. Her 
dimensions are: Length, 10% feet; beam, 26 inches; 
rise at center, 9 inches; at stems, 15 inches; oval red 



136 WOODCRAFT 



elm ribs, 1 inch apart; an inch home tumble; stems, 
plumb and sharp; oak keel and keelson; clinker- 
built, of white cedar. 

Such a canoe will weigh about 22 pounds, and will 
do just as well for the man of 140 or 170 pounds, 
while even a light weight of 110 pounds ought to 
take her over a portage with a light, elastic carrying 
frame, without distress. She will trim best, however, 
at about 160 pounds. For a welter, say of some 200 
pounds, add 6 inches to her length, 2 inches to her 
beam, and 1 inch rise at center. The light weight 
canoeist will find that either of these two canoes will 
prove satisfactory, that is 10 feet in length; weight, 16 
pounds, or 10% feet length, weight, 18 pounds. Either 
is capable of 160 pounds, and they are very steady and 
buoyant, as I happen to know. I dare say any first 
class manufacturers will build canoes of these 
dimensions. 

Provide your canoe with a flooring of oilcloth 3% 
feet long by 15 inches wide; punch holes in it 
and tie it neatly to the ribbing, just where it will best 
protect the bottom from wear and danger. Use only 
a cushion for seat, and do not buy a fancy one with 
permanent stuffing, but get sixpence worth of good, 
unbleached cotton cloth, and have it sewed into pag 
shape. Stuff the bag with fine browse, dry grass or 
leaves, settle it well together, and fasten the open end 
by turning it flatly back and using two or three pins. 
You can empty it if you like when going over a carry, 
and it makes a good pillow at night. 

Select a canoe that fits you, just as you would a 
coat or hat. A 16-pound canoe may fit me exactly, 



THE PROPER CRAFT 137 

but would be a bad misfit for a man of 180 pounds. 
And don't neglect the auxiliary paddle, or "pudding 
stick," as my friends call it. The notion may be new 
to most canoeists, but will be found exceedingly 
handy and useful. It is simply a little one-handed 
paddle weighing 5 to 7 ounces, 20 to 22 inches long, 
with a blade 3% inches wide. Work it out of half- 
inch cherry or maple, and fine the blade down thin. 
Tie it to a rib with a slip-knot, having the handle in 
easy reach, and when you come to a narrow, tortuous 
channel, where shrubs and weeds crowd you on both 
sides, take the double-blade inboard, use the pudding 
stick, and you can go almost anywhere that a musk- 
rat can. 

In fishing for trout or floating deer, remember you 
are dealing with the wary, and that the broad blades 
are very showy when in motion. Therefore, on 
approaching a spring-hole, lay the double-blade 
on the lily-pads where you can pick it up when 
wanted, and handle your canoe with the auxiliary. 
On hooking a large fish, handle the rod with one 
hand and with the other lay the canoe out into deep 
water, away from all entangling alliances. You may 
be surprised to find how easily, with a little practice, 
you can make a two-pound trout or bass tow the 
canoe the way you want it to go. 

In floating for deer, use the double-blade only in 
making the passage to the ground; then take it apart 
and lay it inboard, using only the little paddle to 
float with, tying it to a rib with a yard and a half 
of linen line. On approaching a deer near enough to 
shoot, let go the paddle, leaving it to drift alongside 
while you attend to venison. 



138 WOODCRAFT 



Beneath a hemlock grim and dark, 

Where shrub and vine are intertwining, 
Our shanty stands, well roofed with bark, 

On which the cheerful blaze is shining. 
The smoke ascends in spiral wreath, 

With upward curve the sparks are trending; 
The coffee kettle sings beneath 

Where sparks and smoke with leaves are blending. 

And on the stream a light canoe 

Floats like a freshly fallen feather, 
A fairy thing, that will not do 

For broader seas and stormy weather. 
Her sides no thicker than the shell 

Of Ole Bull's Cremona fiddle, 
The man who rides her will do well 

To part his scalp-lock in the middle. 

— "Forest Runes" — Nessmuk. 



CHAPTER X. 



ODDS AND ENDS. — WHERE TO GO FOR AN OUTING. 
CLINKER? — BOUGHS AND BROWSE. 



WHY A 



HE oft-recurring question as to where 
to go for the outing, can hardly be 
answered at all satisfactorily. In a 
^ ~<^Z\ general way, any place may, and ought 
3^3 Cv to be, satisfactory, where there are 

SJSP? 4 " 3 ^ resn g^een woods, pleasant scenery, 
M]>F^ A ^fl an d fish and game plenty enough to 
supply the camp abundantly, with boat- 
ing facilities and pure water. 

"It's more in the man than it is in 
the land," and there are thousands of such places on 
the waters of the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the 
rivers and lakes of Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin and 
Canada. 

Among the lakes of Central New York one may 
easily select a camping ground, healthy, pleasant, 
easily reached, and with the advantage of cheapness. 
A little too much civilization, perhaps; but the far- 
mers are friendly, and kindly disposed to all summer 
outers who behave like gentlemen. 

For fine forest scenery and unequaled canoeing 
facilities, it must be admitted that the Adirondack 



140 WOODCRAFT 



region stands at the head. There is also fine fishing 
and good hunting, for those who know the right 
places to go for deer and trout. But it is a tedious, 
expensive job getting into the heart of the Wilderness, 
and it is the most costly woodland resort I know of 
when you are there. Without a guide you will be 
likely to see very little sport, and the guide's wage is 
$3 per day and board, the latter ranging from $1 to $2 
per day; and your own bills at the forest hotels will 
run from $2 to $4 per day. At the Prospect House, 
Blue Mountain Lake, they will charge you $25 per 
week, and your guide half price. On the whole, if 
you hire a guide and make the tour of the Northern 
Wilderness as a "gentleman," you will do well to get 
off for $50 per week. You can reduce this nearly 
one-half and have much better sport, by going into 
camp at once, and staying there. The better way is 
for two men to hire a guide, live in camp altogether, 
and divide the expense. In this way it is easy to 
bring the weekly expense within $15 each; and if one 
can afford it, the money will be well spent. 

All along the Alleghany range, from Maine to Mich- 
igan, and from Pennsylvania to the Provinces, num- 
berless resorts exist as pleasant, as healthy, as prolific 
of sport, as the famed Adirondacks, and at half the 
cost. But, for an all-summer canoe cruise, with more 
than 600 accessible lakes and ponds, the Northern 
Wilderness stands alone. And, as a wealthy cockney 
once remarked to me in Brown's Tract, "It's no place 
for a poor man." 

And now I will give my reasons for preferring the 
clinker-built cedar boat, or canoe, to any other. First, 



WHAT IT COSTS 141 



as to material. Cedar is stronger, more elastic, more 
enduring, and shrinks less than pine or any other 
light wood used as boat siding. As one of the best 
builders in the country says, "It has been thoroughly 
demonstrated that a cedar canoe will stand more 
hard knocks than an oak one; for where it only re- 
ceives bruises, the oak streaks will split." And he 
might add, the pine will break. But I suppose it is 
settled beyond dispute that white cedar stands at the 
head for boat streaks. I prefer it, then, because it is 
the best. And I prefer the clinker, because it is the 
strongest, simplest, most enduring, and most easily 
repaired in case of accident. To prove the strength 
theory, take a cedar (or pine) strip eight feet long and 
six inches wide. Bend it to a certain point by an 
equal strain on each end, and carefully note the re- 
sult. Next strip it lengthwise with the rip saw, lap 
the two halves an inch, and nail the lap as in boat 
building. Test it again, and you will find it has 
gained in strength about twenty per cent. That is 
the clinker of it. 

Now work the laps down until the strip is of uni- 
form thickness its entire length, and test it once more; 
you will find it much weaker than on first trial. That 
is the smooth skin, sometimes called lapstreak. 
They, the clinker canoes, are easily tightened when 
they spring a leak through being rattled over stones 
in rapids. It is only to hunt a smooth pebble for a 
clinch head, and settle the nails that have started 
with the hatchet, putting in a few new ones if needed. 
And they are put together, at least by the best build- 
ers without any cement or white lead, naked wood 



142 WOODCRAFT 



to wood, and depending only on close work for water- 
proofing. And each pair of strips is cut to fit and 
lie in its proper place without strain, no two pairs 
being alike, but each pair, from garboards to upper 
streak, having easy, natural form for its destined 
position. 

The veneered canoes are very fine, for deep water; 
but a few cuts on sharp stones will be found ruinous; 
and if exposed much to weather they are liable to 
warp. The builders understand this, and plainly say 
that they prefer not to build fine boats for those who 
will neglect the proper care of them. 

The paper boat, also, will not stand much cutting 
on sharp stones, and is not buoyant when swamped, 
unless fitted with water-tight compartments, which I 
abhor. 

The canvas is rather a logy, limp sort of craft, to 
my thinking, and liable to drown her crew if 
swamped. 

But each and all have their admirers, and pur- 
chasers as well, while each is good in its way, and I 
only mention a few reasons for my preference of the 
cedar. 

When running an ugly rapid or crossing a stormy 
lake, I like to feel that I have enough light, seasoned 
wood under me to keep my mouth and nose above 
water all day, besides saving the rifle and knapsack, 
which, when running into danger, I always tie to the 
ribbing with strong linen line, as I do the paddle 
also, giving it about line enough to just allow free 
play. 

I am not — to use a little modern slang — going to 



VARIOUS CRAFT 143 

"give myself away" on canoeing, or talk of startling 
adventure. But, for the possible advantage of some 
future canoeist, I will briefly relate what happened 
to me on a certain windy morning one summer. It was 
on one of the larger lakes — no matter which — be- 
tween Paul Smith's and the Fulton Chain. I had 
camped over night in a spot that did not suit me in 
the least, but it seemed the best I could do then and 
there. The night was rough, and the early morning 
threatening. However, I managed a cup of coffee, 
"tied in," and made a slippery carry of two miles a 
little after sunrise. Arrived on the shore of the lake, 
things did not look promising. The whirling, twirl- 
ing clouds were black and dangerous looking, the 
crisp, dark waves were crested with spume, and I had 
a notion of just making a comfortable camp and 
waiting for better weather. But the commissary de- 
partment was reduced to six Boston crackers, with a 
single slice of pork, and it was twelve miles of wil- 
derness to the nearest point of supplies, four miles 
of it carries, included. Such weather might last a 
week, and I decided to go. For half an hour I sat 
on the beach, taking weather notes. The wind was 
northeast; my course was due west, giving me four 
points free. Taking five feet of strong line, I tied 
one end under a rib next the keelson, and the other 
around the paddle. Stripping to shirt and drawers, 
I stowed everything in the knapsack, and tied that 
safely in the fore peak. Then I swung out. Before 
I was a half mile out, I fervently wished myself back. 
But it was too late. How that little, corky, light 
canoe did bound and snap, with a constant tendency 



144 WOODCRAFT 



to come up in the wind's eye, that kept me on the 
qui vive every instant. She shipped no water; she 
was too buoyant for that. But she was all the time 
in 4 danger of pitching her crew overboard. It soon 
came to a crisis. About the middle of the lake, on 
the north side, there is a sharp, low gulch that runs 
away back through the hills, looking like a level cut 
through a railroad embankment. And down this 
gulch came a fierce thunder gust that was like a small 
eyclone. It knocked down trees, swept over the 
lake, and — caught the little canoe on the crest of a 
wave, right under the garboard streak. I went over- 
board like a shot; but I kept my grip on the paddle. 
That grip was worth a thousand dollars to the 
"Travelers Accidental;" and another thousand to 
the "Equitable Company," because the paddle, with 
its line, enabled me to keep the canoe in hand, and 
prevent her from going away to leeward like a dry 
leaf. When I once get my nose above water, and 
my hand on her after stem, I knew I had the whole 
business under control. Pressing the stem down, I 
took a look inboard. The little jilt! She had not 
shipped a quart of water. And there was the knap- 
sack, the rod, the little auxiliary paddle, all just as I 
had tied them in; only the crew and the double-blade 
had gone overboard. As I am elderly and out of 
practice in the swimming line, and it was nearly half 
a mile to a lee shore, and, as I was out of breath and 
water-logged, it is quite possible that a little fore- 
thought and four cents' worth of fishline saved — the 
insurance companies two thousand dollars. 

How I slowly kicked that canoe ashore; how the 



OVERBOARD 145 



sun came out bright and hot; how, instead of making 
the remaining eleven miles, I raised a conflagration 
and a comfortable camp, dried out, and had a pleas- 
ant night of it; all this is neither here nor there. 
The point I wish to make is, keep your duffle safe to 
float, and your paddle and canoe sufficiently in hand 
to always hold your breathing works above water 
level. So shall your children look confidently for 
your safe return, while the "Accidentals" arise and 
call you a good investment. 

There is only one objection to the clinker-built 
canoe that occurs to me as at all plausible. This is, 
that the ridge-like projections of her clinker laps 
offer resistance to the water, and retard her speed. 
Theoretically, this is correct. Practically, it is not 
proven. Her streaks are so nearly on her water 
line that the resistance, if any, must be infinitesimal. 
It is possible, however, that this element might lessen 
her speed one or two minutes in a mile race. I am 
not racing, but taking leisurely recreation. I can 
wait two or three minutes as well as not. Three or 
four knots an hour will take me through to the last 
carry quite, as soon as I care to make the landing. 

A few words of explanation and advice may not 
be out of place. I have used the words "boughs" 
and "browse" quite frequently. I am sorry they are 
not more in use. The first settlers in the unbroken 
forest knew how to diagnose a tree. They came to 
the "Holland Purchase" from the Eastern States, 
with their families, in a covered wagon, drawn by a 
yoke of oxen, and the favorite cow patiently leading 
behind. They could not start until the ground was 



146 WOODCRAFT 



settled, some time in May, and nothing could be done 
in late summer, save to erect a log cabin, and clear a 
few acres for the next season. To this end the oxen 
were indispensable, and a cow was of first necessity, 
where there were children. And cows and oxen 
must have hay. But there was not a ton of hay in 
the country. A few hundred pounds of coarse wild 
grass was gleaned from the margins of streams and 
small marshes; but the main reliance was "browse." 
Through the warm months the cattle could take care 
of themselves; but, when winter settled down in 
earnest, a large part of the settler's work consisted 
in providing browse for his cattle. First and best 
was the basswood (linden) ; then came maple, beech, 
birch and hemlock. Some of the trees would be 
nearly three feet in diameter, and, when felled, much 
of the browse would be twenty feet above the reach 
of cattle, on the ends of huge limbs. Then the 
boughs were lopped off, and the cattle could get at 
the browse. The settlers divided the tree into log, 
limbs, boughs, and browse. Anything small enough 
for a cow or deer to masticate was browse. And 
that is just what you want for a camp in the forest. 
Not twigs, that may come from a thorn, or boughs, 
that may be as thick as your wrist, but browse, which 
may be used for a mattress, the healthiest in the 
world. 

And now for a little useless advice. In going into 
the woods, don't take a medicine chest or a set of 
surgical instruments with you. A bit of sticking 
salve, a wooden vial of anti pain tablets and another 
of rhubarb regulars, your fly medicine, and a pair of 



BROWSE 147 



tweezers, will be enough. Of course you have needles 
and thread. 

If you go before the open season for shooting, 
take no gun. It will simply be a useless incumbrance 
and a nuisance. 

If you go to hunt, take a solemn oath never to 
point the shooting end of your gun toward yourself 
or any other human being. 

In still-hunting, swear yourself black in the face 
never to shoot at a dim, moving object in the woods 
for a deer, unless you have seen that it is a deer. In 
these days there are quite as many hunters as deer in 
the woods; and it is a heavy, wearisome job to pack 
a dead or wounded man ten or twelve miles out to a 
clearing, let alone that it spoils all the pleasure of 
the hunt, and is apt to raise hard feelings among his 
relations. 

In a word, act coolly and rationally. So shall 
your outing be a delight in conception and the ful- 
fillment thereof; while the memory of it shall come 
back to you in pleasant dreams, when legs and shoul- 
ders are too stiff and old for knapsack and rifle. 

That is me. That is why I sit here to-night — 
with the north wind and sleet rattling the one win- 
dow of my little den — writing what I hope younger 
and stronger men will like to take into the woods 
with them, and read. Not that I am so very old. 
The youngsters are still not anxious to buck against 
the muzzleloader in off-hand shooting. But, in com- 
mon with a thousand »other old graybeards, I feel 
that the fire, the fervor, the steel, that once carried 



148 WOODCRAFT 



me over the trail from dawn until dark, is dulled and 
deadened within me. 

We had our day of youth and May; 

We may have grown a trifle sober; 
But life may reach a wintry way, 

And we are only in October. 

Wherefore, let us be thankful that there are still 
thousands of cool, green nooks beside crystal springs, 
where the weary soul may hide for a time, away from 
debts, duns and deviltries, and a while commune with 
nature in her undress. 

And with kindness to all true woodsmen; and with 
malice toward none, save the trout-hog, the netter, 
the cruster, and skin-butcher, let us 

PREPARE TO TURN IN. 



INDEX 



Adirondack region. 41, 140 

Angle-worms 70 

Axe 10, 12 

Bait, pork frog 59, 62 

Fish-belly 68 

Grubs 53 

Worms 70 

Bait fishing 53 

Barbs on hooks 58 

Baskets (pack) 8 

Bear 123 

Beans 101 

Beds 74, 82 

Black bass bait 62, 69 

Black flies 21 

Blanket bag 6 

Boats 142 

Boots 5, 111 

Bread 92 

Brook trout 52 

Broom for camp 75 

Browse 145 

Camps 25 

Indian camp 26 

Brush shanty 30 

Shanty tent 31 

Tents 39 

Shed roof 38 

Goal cabin 36 

Camp-fires.. 40, 48, 85, 71 

Gamp stoves 40, 84 

Camp cookery 73 

Camp furniture 75 

Canvas boats 142 



Canvas, to waterproof 31 

Canoes 131, 140, 142 

Nessmuk 133 

Susan Nipper 134 

Sairy Gamp 135 

Canoes, weight of 136 

Canoeing 128 

Canoe seats 136 

Paddles 137 

Cleanliness in camp . . 78 

Clothing 4, 111 

Clinker build 141 

Coal cabin 36 

Condiments Ill 

Cooking 71 

Cooking receipts: 

Baked beans 102 

Boiled potatoes ... 98 

Bread 92, 93 

Brown bread 103 

Canned goods 109 

Club bread 94 

Coffee 94 

Ducks 106 

Fish 108 

Flapjack 92 

Fried squirrel 105 

Grouse 106 

Johnny cake 92 

Mudding up 110 

Pan cake 93 

Pigeons 105 

Porcupine 107 

Pork and beans ... 102 



150 



INDEX 



Potatoes 98, 99 

Quail 106 

Rabbit 108 

Roast potatoes .... 99 

Ruffed grouse. . . . 106 

Soups 104 

Squirrel 105 

Stews 105 

Tea 98 

Vegetables 99, 101 

Venison steak 106 

Venison roast 107 

Woodcock 106 

Cooking fires 71 

Cooking utensils .... 13 

Deer 124 

Duffle 4, 6 

Ditty-bag 16 

Fires (see Camp and 
Cooking). 

Fire woods 84 

Fishing 50 

Fly-fishing . . 52, 57 

Bait fishing 53 

Fish-belly bait 68 

Fish, cooking of 108 

Flapjack 92 

Flies 52 

Flies, list of 53 

Fly-fishing 52 

Fly pests 21 

Fly pest varnish .... 22 

Footgear 5, 112 

Forests 45 

Forks 13 

Frog-bait 59, 62 

Frogging 17, 66 

Game fish 64 

Gang hooks 59 

Getting lost 19 



Gnats 21 

Gut snells 69 

Hat 5 

Hatchet 10, 12 

Headlight 67 

Hooks, size of ..... . 64 

Hooks, kinds of ... . 60 

Hooks, barbs 58 

Hunting 112 

Indian camp 26 

Insects .20, 21 

Johnny cake 92 

Knapsack 8 

Knives 10 

Lake trout 63 

Lapstreak boats . . . 141 

Large fish 65, 69 

Lines 52 

Lost in woods 19 

Mascalonge 61 

Mosquitoes 21 

Mosquito ointment 22 

"Mudding up" 110 

Night in camp 28 

Night fishing 57 

Overwork 1 

Pack baskets 8 

Paddles 137 

Paper boats 142 

Pests 20, 21 

Pickerel 61, 65 

Pillows ..25, 29, 136 

Planning outings ... 3 

Pocket axe 10, 12 

Poker and tongs .... 75 

Preparations 7 

Pudding sticks 137 

"Punkies" 21, 22 

Racine boats 142 

Reels 52 

Rifle 120 



INDEX 



151 



Rods 15 

"Roughing it" 18 

Snells 69 

Spring holes 55, 57 

Sparks 39 

Swivels 69 

Shelter cloth 6 

Still-hunting 112 

Stoves 40 

Spoons 13 

Shanty tent 31 

Tents 26, 31, 39 



Tinware 13 

Tongs 75 

Trout , 52 

Vacations 2 

Vegetables 99, 101 

Venison 106 

Waterproofing canvas 31 
Winter camps ...... 45 

Wire snells 69 

Williams, "Pete";... 113 

Wild hog 121 

Worms 70 












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